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BS  2651  .F4A  v. 2' 
Feine,  Paul,  1859-1933. 
St.  Paul  as  a  theologian 


Foreign  Religious  Series 


Edited  by 
R.  J.  COOKE,  D.  D. 


Second  Series.    i6mo.  cloth.    Each  40  cents,  net. 


DO  WE  NEED  CHRIST  FOR 

COMMUNION  WITH  GOD? 

By  Professor  Ludwig  Lemme,  of  the  University 
of  Heidelberg 


ST.   PAUL  AS  A  THEOLOGIAN 

(two  parts) 

By  Professor  Paul  Peine,  of  the  University  of  Vienna 


THE  NEW  MESSAGE  IN  THE   TEACHING 

OF  JESUS 

By  Professor  Philipp  Bachmann,  of  the  University 

of  Erlangen 


THE  PECULIARITY  OF  THE  RELIGION 

,  OF  THE  BIBLE 

By  Professor  Conrad  Von  Orelli,  of  the  University 
of  Basle 


OUR  LORD 

By  Professor  K.  Miiller,  of  the  University  of  Erlangen 


TWO  PARTS 
PART  II 


St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 


By 
PAUL^FEINE 

Professor  in  the  University  of  Vienna 


PART  II 


NEW   YORK:    EATON   &   MAINS 
CINCINNATI :  JENNINGS  &  GRAHAM 


Copyright,  1908,  by 
EATON  &  MAINS, 


PART  SECOND 
The  Origin  of  the  Pauline  Christology 


THE  "religious-historical'*  UNDERSTAND- 
ING  OF   THE   PAULINE    CHRISTOLOGY 

The  question  as  to  the  origin  of  the  Paul- 
ine Christ-picture  is  of  recent  date.  We  owe 
it  to  F.  Christian  Baur  and  the  so-called 
Tubingen  school.  Following  the  points  of 
view  which  Baur  asserted,  Holsten  has  en- 
deavored above  all  to  show  how  Paul  arrived 
at  his  theology.  He  understands  the  entire 
theological  ideal  world  of  Paul,  including  his 
Christology,  as  the  result  of  a  process  which 
logically  effectuated  itself  in  the  mind  of 
Paul.  The  fact  of  Jesus's  death  on  the  cross 
and  his  understanding  of  it  as  a  revelation  of 
the  divine  purpose  of  salvation,  effected  a 
gradual  inner  transformation  of  the  elements 
of  his  Jewish  conception  of  the  world  which 
was  opposed  to  the  idea  of  the  world  de- 
manded by  his  Christian  consciousness. 
Holsten  rejects  every  supernatural  factor 
in  this  transformation.    He  knows  only  im- 

7 


8  St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

manent,  psychological  events.  The  appear- 
ance of  Christ  before  Damascus  was  no  real 
objective  manifestation,  but  mainly  an  inner 
illumination  which  showed  to  Paul  that  Jesus 
whom  he  persecuted  was  no  pseudo-Messiah. 
But  since  he  was  convinced  that  in  this  sub- 
jective vision  he  had  seen  the  living  Christ 
as  a  heavenly  being  surrounded  by  the 
brightness  of  God,  he  conceived  of  Christ 
in  accordance  with  the  Jewish-Alexandrian 
notion  of  his  time,  as  a  heavenly  man  who 
was  the  image  of  God  and  of  divine  nature. 
In  this  attempt  of  Holsten's  to  explain 
Paul's  conception  of  Christ  there  lies  a  very 
important  idea  which  theological  science 
must  never  lose  sight  of  if  it  would  under- 
stand Paul  historically;  and  he  is  here  dis- 
tinctly treated  as  a  theological  thinker.  Hol- 
sten  was  earnestly  bent  on  proving  how 
everything  had  to  change  in  the  mind  of 
Paul  after  he  conceived  Christ's  death  on  the 
cross  as  a  divine  act  of  salvation,  but  his 
explanation  of  the  change  in  Paul  can  never 
satisfy.  Certain  it  is  that  psychological 
points  of  contact  for  the  understanding  of 
Christ  as  Messiah  already  existed  in  Paul, 
the  Pharisee.     It  contradicts  all  probability 


Origin  of  Pauline  Christology     9 

that  the  Christ-vision  was  a  product  of  the 
mind  of  Paul.  One  is  not  even  required  to 
emphasize  that  in  this  case  Paul  would  have 
been  completely  mistaken  concerning  the  ex- 
perience of  his  conversion.  As  little  as  the 
apostle  speaks  of  it,  the  elements  of  the 
Christian  faith  had  at  that  time  already 
struggled  with  his  Jewish  faith,  and  the  ver- 
dict must  be  that  the  very  law  of  cause  and 
effect  which  Holsten  invokes  fails  in  his 
hypothesis. 

According  to  our  proof  in  section  2,  the 
question  in  the  conversion  of  Paul  is,  in  the 
main,  not  the  logical  understanding  of  a 
truth  but  a  new  creation,  a  religious  and 
moral  innovation.  An  episode  in  his  life, 
which  radically  transformed  the  contents  of 
his  thought  and  volition ;  an  elementary  ex- 
perience for  whose  description  Paul  catches 
at  the  highest  comparison  possible,  this  his 
mind  did  not  produce.  The  consciousness 
of  obligation  to  serve  Christ  with  body  and 
life,  with  all  his  thoughts  and  powers,  with 
giving  up  his  own  ego,  did  not  spring  from 
a  logical  process.  The  moral  ideal  of  life 
which  he  henceforth  followed  instead  of  the 
Pharisaical,  as  well  as  his  apostolic  calling. 


lo         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

cannot  be  intelligently  comprehended  as  the 
result  of  his  deductions  from  the  Messiahship 
of  Jesus. 

Scientific  theology  has  not  fully  consented 
to  this  part  of  Holsten's  theory.  In  recent 
times,  however,  it  celebrates  a  surprising 
resurrection  by  emphasizing  that  part  which 
Holsten  already  found  necessary  in  order  to 
explain  the  grandeur  and  divinity  of  the 
Pauline  picture  of  the  Christ.  Religious  his- 
torical inquiry  of  our  days  connects  with  the 
idea  of  the  heavenly  man  of  Paul's  day,  and 
from  that  point  seeks  to  solve  the  problem. 

The  mystery  of  New  Testament  Chris- 
tology  is  said  to  be,  that  predicates  are  trans- 
ferred to  Jesus  which  were  given  to  the  con- 
ception of  the  Christ  of  that  time  in  general. 
Derived  from  the  Orient,  as  we  know  from 
Jewish  apocalypses,  there  lived  in  the  Juda- 
ism of  that  period  the  picture  of  a  heavenly 
Christ  who  was  expected  as  divine  revealer, 
as  heavenly  King.  Later,  Judaism,  in  oppo- 
sition to  Christianity,  has  indeed  given  up 
the  most  of  this  and  opposed  it  vehemently. 
But  for  the  understanding  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, we  must  accept  this  belief  as  then 
living ;  for  when  Jesus  appeared  in  his  super- 


Origin  of  Pauline  Christology    ii 

human  grandeur  and  was  known  as  Christ, 
his  disciples  asserted  of  him  the  greatest 
things  Judaism  could  affirm.  These  foreign 
religious  motives  must  have  crowded  into  the 
congregation  immediately  after  the  death  of 
Jesus.  Minds  which  were  longing  for  the 
presence  of  God  needed  a  Son  of  God  who 
came  down  from  heaven,  and  transferred  to 
Jesus  the  ideals  of  their  heart. 

Such  ideas  have  been  especially  and  re- 
cently transferred  to  the  Pauline  Christol- 
ogy. This  problem  must  indeed  be  reckoned 
with  when  one  thinks  that  it  contains  essen- 
tially new  elements  in  comparison  with  prim- 
itive Christian  and  synoptic  Christology. 

To  the  question:  How  did  the  Pauline 
Christology  originate?  the  present  "reli- 
gious-historical" answer  reads :  This  Christ- 
picture  did  not  originate  from  the  impression 
of  the  personality  of  Jesus.  Pauline  the- 
ology did  not  determine  the  life-work  nor  the 
biographical  portrait  of  Jesus.  This  fact  can- 
not be  shaken  even  if  Paul  had  known  Jesus 
intimately,  or  whether  he  may  have  said  this 
or  that  of  Jesus  in  his  missionary  preaching. 
He,  whose  servant  and  disciple  he  wished  to 
be,  was,  critically  speaking,  not  the  historical 


12         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

man  Jesus  at  all,  but  another.  The  Pauline 
Christ  becomes  intelligible  only  when  one 
supposes  that  Paul  the  Pharisee  had  already 
a  sum  of  ready  ideas  concerning  a  divine 
Christ  which  were  afterward  transferred  to 
the  historical  Jesus.  In  the  moment  of  con- 
version when  he  imagined  he  beheld  Jesus 
in  a  vision  in  the  bright  glory  of  his  resur- 
rection-life he  identified  him  with  his  Christ, 
and  without  further  ceremony  transferred  to 
Jesus  all  the  ideas  which  he  already  had  of 
the  heavenly  being;  that  he  already  existed 
before  the  world  and  took  part  in  its  cre- 
ation. Paul  was  the  first  who  took  the  deci- 
sive step  for  the  new  formation  and  expan- 
sion of  Christology.  Intimate  disciples  of 
Jesus  could  not  so  easily  believe  that  the 
Man  who  ate  with  them  at  Capernaum,  or 
rode  with  them  on  the  Galilean  Sea,  was  the 
Creator  of  the  world;  but  for  Paul,  who 
knew  not  Jesus,  this  difficulty  did  not  exist. 
He  could  transfer  to  Christ  such  lofty  predi- 
cates; but  the  thought  that  a  divine  being 
left  heaven,  went  about  in  human  form  and 
died  in  order  to  ascend  again  into  heaven, 
was,  according  to  its  nature,  a  mythological 
conception. 


Origin  of  Pauline  Christology    13 

This  hypothesis,  too,  starts  from  the  sup- 
position that  transcendent  influences  must  be 
excluded  for  the  origin  of  the  Pauline 
Christ-picture.  Precisely  similar,  as  in  the 
case  of  Holsten,  is  the  following  line  of 
thought:  What  Paul  experienced  before 
Damascus  was  a  vision,  and  visions  are 
events  in  the  human  mind  and  products  of 
the  human  mind,  though  the  visionary  may 
think  otherwise.  This  event  may  have  had 
its  sufficient  causes  equally  with  the  visions 
of  those  who  saw  Savonarola  alive  after  his 
death.  Though  we  can  no  more  accurately 
point  out  the  causes,  they  must  have  been 
based  on  the  personal  character  of  Paul,  on 
impressions  and  commotions  of  his  soul. 
Herein,  also,  Holsten  is  the  leader  of  the 
supposition  that  the  conversion  of  Paul  as 
to  its  nature,  is  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  change 
of  conviction. 

To  this  hypothesis  applies  the  very 
same  thing  which  we  have  just  asserted 
against  Holsten;  but  more  strongly  than 
in  his  case,  the  law  of  cause  and  effect  is 
here  also  violated,  since  the  Christ-picture  of 
the  apostle  is  said  to  have  been  already  in 
his  mind  before  his  conversion,  and  directly 


14         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

after  his  conversion  transferred  to  Jesus, 
whereas  Holsten  inserts  this  identification  in 
the  course  of  the  process  of  thoughts  which 
followed  the  conversion.  In  that  case  the 
question  can  be  still  less,  as  in  the  case  of 
Holsten,  of  a  real  explanation  of  the  sudden 
change  in  the  life  of  Paul  and  of  a  new 
formation  which  touched  the  depths  of  his 
being  and  thinking;  for  in  such  case  Paul 
would  already  have  had  all  the  elements  of 
the  new  life  in  himself,  as  parts  of  a  theory 
familiar  to  him.  And  where,  in  the  history 
of  the  world,  did  a  vision  ever  have  a  like 
effect  as  with  Paul  ?  Before  Damascus  Paul 
became  a  servant  of  Christ,  he  became  such 
a  mighty  preacher  of  the  gospel  that  the 
Grseco-Roman  world  could  not  resist  his 
message.  Can  one  really  put  the  "vision''  of 
this  man  on  a  par  with  the  visions  of  those 
who  imagined  they  saw  Savonarola  after  his 
death? 

But  following  this  theory:  How  could 
Paul  combine  the  life-picture  of  a  simple  man 
with  that  of  the  heavenly  King?  Must  not 
the  simplest  veracity  have  induced  him  to 
ask  whether  this  man  was  entitled  to  it? 
How  could  the  happiness  of  the  apostle  have 


Origin  of  Pauline  Christology    15 

followed  from  such  a  combination  that  he 
now  could  consider  himself  as  having  really 
sensibly  entered  into  a  world  which  till  then 
he  had  merely  hoped  for?  Furthermore: 
We  find  indeed  in  the  writings  of  contem- 
porary Judaism,  in  the  allegories  of  the  book 
of  Enoch,  in  the  apocalypses  of  Ezra  and 
Baruch,  in  the  Testaments  of  the  Twelve 
Patriarchs,  descriptions  of  a  heavenly  Mes- 
siah-King, but  each  of  these  apocalyptic  pic- 
tures is  different.  The  Messianic  dogmatics 
of  the  Judaism  of  that  time  has  something 
very  iridescent,  contradictory,  changeable, 
whereas  the  Christ-picture  of  Paul  has  cer- 
tain firmly  outlined  characteristics  and  does 
not  coincide  with  any  of  the  Jewish  Messiah- 
pictures  known  to  us.  Where  shall  we  look 
for  the  original  which  served  as  a  model  for 
the  Pauline  Christ  ?  It  lies  in  the  dark,  and 
I  think  it  will  stay  there. 

But  we  are  told  the  demeanor  of  the  apos- 
tle toward  the  preaching  of  Christ  of  the 
primitive  church  was  directly  startling.  The 
older  apostles  would  have  had  a  true  Christ- 
picture,  whereas  that  of  Paul  was  an  apoca- 
lyptic, a  mind-picture;  and  yet  Paul  had 
the  boldness  to  oppose  the  Judseo-Christian 


1 6         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

preaching ;  to  curse  everyone,  even  an  angel 
from  heaven,  who  preached  another  gospel 
than  he  preached.  Could  he  express  his  con- 
viction that  in  the  main  there  exists  no  essen- 
tial difference  between  the  primitive  apostolic 
preaching  and  his  ?  Could  he  go  to  Jerusa- 
lem, to  the  apostolic  council,  in  the  hope  of 
receiving  the  approbation  of  his  gospel  from 
the  primitive  church?  And  could  he  have 
really  obtained  it  ?  Would  he  not  have  been 
blamed  there  for  decking  the  historical  Jesus 
with  unhistorical  claims  to  majesty,  dignity 
and  divinity? 

No,  in  this  way  the  Pauline  Christology 
can  scientifically  never  be  made  intelligible. 
Paul  in  the  struggle  with  Jewish  Christianity 
came  out  victorious  when  his  preaching  of 
Christ  conquered  the  world  of  that  time. 
If  almost  all  epoch-making  men  in  the 
history  of  the  Christian  church  received  de- 
cisive impulses  from  the  apostle  Paul,  the 
assumption  lies  near,  that  the  Pauline  preach- 
ing contains  the  most  inalienable  truths  of 
our  religion,  and  the  preaching  of  Christ,  its 
kernel,  is  not  false.  The  Pauline  word: 
"For  other  foundation  can  no  man  lay  than 
that  is  laid,  which  is  Jesus  Christ,"  that  is, 


Origin  of  Pauline  Christology    17 

the  historical  Jesus,  and  this  applies  also  to 
the  apostle  himself. 

Finally,  it  may  also  be  affirmed  that  Paul 
himself  forbids  entering  upon  the  suggested 
"religious-historical"  way  of  explaining  his 
Christology.  He  once  expressed  himself 
concerning  the  Messianic  ideas  which  he  had 
before  his  conversion:  "Wherefore  hence- 
forth know  we  no  man  after  the  flesh :  yea, 
though  we  have  known  Christ  after  the  flesh, 
yet  now  henceforth  know  we  him  no  more" 
(2  Cor.  5.  16)  ;  Christ  is  here  used  appella- 
tively  in  the  meaning  "the  Messiah"  (as 
Rom.  10.  6,  7;  Gal.  2.  17)  ;  and  the  present 
which  the  apostle  opposes  to  the  past,  means 
here,  as  in  the  parallel  passage  (Gal.  i.  10), 
the  entire  period  of  his  Christian  state.  This 
follows  from  the  reference  of  the  "hence- 
forth" to  the  mention  of  the  death  of  Christ, 
verses  14,  15.  The  purpose  intended  by  this 
death,  as  verse  15  describes  it,  comes  about 
according  to  the  apostle's  judgment  as  soon 
as  Christ's  death  shows  its  effect  on  a  man. 
Since  his  conversion  the  apostle  considers  no 
man  of  any  importance  whose  merit  lies  in 
the  fleshly  sphere.  Even  the  Christ-picture 
which  he  formerly  had  and  which,   retro- 


;i8         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

specting,  lie  now  perceives  is  fleshl}^,  he  laid 
aside.  What  he  understands  by  "fleshly" 
follows  from  the  contrast  of  the  new  creature 
which  is  given  in  the  following  verse,  17: 
"therefore,  if  any  man  be  in  Christ,  he  is  a 
new  creature :  old  things  are  passed  away ; 
behold,  all  things  are  become  new."  We 
have  here  also  the  known  contrast  of  the 
Pauline  theology,  flesh  and  Spirit ;  and  there 
is  no  reason  to  deduct  anything  in  this  one 
passage  from  the  almost  dualistic  keenness 
in  which  these  two  ideas  stand  against  each 
other.  As  Paul  otherwise  also  reckons  Juda- 
ism under  the  category  of  flesh  and  declares 
it  to  be  overcome  and  destroyed  by  Chris- 
tianity as  the  religion  of  the  Spirit,  so  he 
judges  of  his  ideas  of  the  Messiah  which  he 
formerly  held,  whether  they  were  really  more 
apocalyptical  or  Pharisaically  separistic. 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  19 

II 

Elements  of  the  Pauline  Christology 

In  the  rejected  explanation  of  the  Paulhie 
Christology  we  nevertheless  find  an  entirely 
correct  idea :  that  is  the  reference  to  the  con- 
temporaneous conditionality  of  the  Pauline 
Christ-picture.  As  a  matter  of  course,  Paul 
could  only  make  Christ  intelligible  to  himself 
by  the  aid  of  ideas  current  in  his  time.  He 
was  a  Hellenistic  Jew  of  the  first  Christian 
century,  and  he  did  not  deny  this  in  his 
Christological  thoughts.  Hence  we  find  with 
him  numerous  contrasts  and  parallels  with 
the  descriptions  of  the  Messianic  time  and 
the  Messianic  picture  in  the  later  Jewish 
writings.  The  eschatological  sphere  of  ideas 
of  Paul,  that  is,  his  view  of  the  last  things 
and  the  establishment  of  the  kingdom  of 
God  on  earth  through  the  Messiah,  like  that 
of  the  evangelists,  can  only  be  understood  in 
connection  with  the  parallel  notions  of  the 
Judaism  of  that  time.  The  prevailing  dif- 
ference that  Judaism  expected  the  "advent" 
of  the  Messiah,  while  Christianity  looked  for 


20         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

the  "return"  of  Jesus,  is  not  very  great,  so 
much  the  less  since  the  Christians  themselves 
also  spoke  of  the  "advent"  and  not  of  the 
"return"  of  Christ. 

Eschatological  passages  in  the  Pauline 
Epistles  like  i  Thess.  4.  16,  17;  2  Thess.  i. 
7-12;  2.  3-12;  I  Cor.  15.  24-28,  51-55;  even 
2  Cor.  5.  I- 10,  by  eliminating  from  them 
what  is  really  Christian,  could  just  as  well 
stand  in  Jewish  apocalypses.  The  Pauline, 
like  the  Jewish  apocalyptics,  knows  a  Mes- 
siah whose  coming  will  close  the  course  of 
the  present  world  and  bring  in  the  future. 
Here,  as  there,  is  the  belief  that  the  dawn  of 
the  Messianic  period  is  immediately  at  hand. 
Here,  as  there,  is  the  idea  of  the  preexistence 
of  the  Messiah;  here,  as  there,  his  appear- 
ance on  earth  is  described  in  a  kindred  man- 
ner :  he  destroys  the  powers  of  darkness,  the 
ungodly  angelic  powers;  overcomes  Satan 
and  destroys  all  enemies  of  God ;  but  his  own 
he  fills  with  righteousness,  wisdom  and 
power,  and  establishes  a  kingdom  of  peace. 
As  the  judge  of  the  world  he  comes  in  the 
clouds  of  heaven  accompanied  by  his  holy 
angels,  with  the  sound  of  the  trumpet  of 
judgment.    He  raises  the  dead,  changes  the 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology2i 

living,  renews  creation.  He  is  endowed  with 
the  glory  of  heaven,  the  manifestation  of 
God,  and  enjoys  adoration.  His  kingdom, 
however,  is  not  of  eternal  duration,  but  his 
dominion  is  succeeded  by  the  dominion  of 
God  which  lasts  forever. 

It  is  clear  that  the  most  essential  ideas  of 
Jewish  apocalyptics  have  been  received  into 
the  theology  of  Paul;  but  this  problem  be- 
comes still  more  complicated  by  this,  that 
we  not  only  find  the  same  apocalyptic  picture 
among  the  evangelists,  but  Jesus  himself 
expressed  his  coming  again  in  apocalyptic 
forms  of  thought.  For  the  Danielle  picture 
of  the  Son  of  man  which  Jesus  applied  to 
himself,  is  essentially  apocalyptic.  In  a  sol- 
emn hour  before  the  high  priest  our  Lord 
answered  the  question  whether  he  be  the 
Messiah,  with  a  yea,  and  added :  "hereafter 
shall  ye  see  the  Son  of  man  sitting  on  the 
right  hand  of  power,  and  coming  in  the 
clouds  of  heaven"  (Matt.  26.  64).  He  also 
thought  of  his  coming  again  as  impending. 
As  Son  of  man  he  also  claimed  for  himself 
the  dominion  and  the  judgment  of  the  world 
(Matt.  25.  31  sqq. ;  16.  2y\  19.  28  sq.). 

A  section  of  present  theological  science 


22         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

rightly  assumes  that  in  the  primitive  Chris- 
tian theology  more  room  was  given  to  these 
eschatological  apocalyptic  thoughts  than  was 
the  case  with  Jesus ;  but  we  shall  never  suc- 
ceed in  clearly  separating  these  developments 
from  Jesus'  self-testimony.  In  Paul  we  must 
in  any  case  acknowledge  a  twofold  influence 
in  this  sphere  of  ideas — that  of  the  apocalyp- 
tics  of  his  time,  and  also  that  of  the  teaching 
of  Jesus.  As  Jesus  himself,  so  Paul  sees  in 
Jesus  the  future — and  in  part  already  present 
— King  of  the  kingdom  and  judge  of  the 
world ;  and  against  the  entire  Jewish  apoca- 
lyptics  he  agrees  with  Jesus  in  this,  that  he 
eliminates  everything  political  from  the  Mes- 
sianic picture  of  the  future,  and  delineates  it 
purely  religiously,  a  difference  which  can 
only  be  historically  explained  from  depend- 
ence of  Paul  on  Jesus. 

But  here  there  is  manifested  a  desire  to 
oppose  a  prevalent,  yea,  an  almost  ruling 
conception  of  Paulinism.  One  meets  again 
and  again  with  efforts  to  present  the  eschato- 
logical expectation  as  the  kernel  of  Paul's 
belief  in  Christ.  If  this  is  correct,  Paul  does 
indeed  not  specially  surpass  his  time.  The 
difference  between  him  and  the  older  apos- 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  23 

ties — and  the  Judaism  of  that  time,  was  in 
the  main  this,  that  he  identified  the  Messiah 
expected  from  heaven  with  the  man  Jesus, 
and  that  in  the  Spirit,  given  already  as 
earnest  of  the  future  Messianic  blessings,  he 
saw  the  firm  pledge  of  the  speedy  coming 
of  the  kingdom  of  God.  In  that  case  the 
main  stress  of  the  religious  thoughts  of  Paul 
would  not  rest  on  that  which,  in  the  church 
of  that  time,  was  revived  with  divine  powers 
through  the  risen  and  exalted  Christ  and  on 
that  which  Jesus  has  been  in  his  earthly  ap- 
pearance, but  on  the  future,  in  the  consum- 
mation which  Christ  shall  bring  when  he 
comes  again. 

But  the  importance  of  the  historically 
great  lies  not  in  what  it  has  in  common  w^ith 
its  surroundings  and  time,  but  in  what  it 
differs,  in  the  new  which  it  brings  as  leaven 
into  the  period  of  development.  In  apoca- 
lyptic thoughts  Paul  also  paid  his  tribute  to 
his  time.  How  could  it  be  otherwise?  No 
thinker  can  free  himself  from  the  perceptive 
world  and  apprehensive  material  of  his  time ; 
but  our  statement  of  Paul's  Christian  belief 
also  shows  that  the  telling  effect  of  his  reli- 
gious life  is  rather  the  triumphant  conscious- 


24         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

ness  of  having  already  made  a  real  experi- 
ence of  the  divine  life,  and  as  having  known 
himself  already  in  possession  of  redemption. 
Paul  already  feels  himself  as  a  new  creature. 
He  knows  that  nothing  can  separate  him 
from  the  love  of  God  which  saved  him  in 
Christ  Jesus.  He  is  justified;  has  access 
already  to  God;  can  call  him  Father;  the 
spirit  of  joyous  trust  and  gladness  quenches 
all  suffering,  and  again  and  again  obtains  in 
him  the  upper  hand.  That  which  Luther, 
with  the  longing  of  his  soul  thirsting  after 
salvation  learnt  from  Paul,  and  that  which 
leads  us  also  again  and  again  to  Paul,  is  the 
certainty  of  salvation  which  hails  with 
shouts  of  joy  from  his  Epistles. 

Only  when  this  is  ascertained  can  the 
other  side  also  be  rightly  estimated,  the  hope 
of  justification  in  the  final  judgment;  the 
anxious  expectation  of  the  completion  of 
redemption ;  the  sincere  striving  to  be  wholly 
united  with  Christ;  the  wish  to  throw  off 
everything  which  still  binds  him  to  this 
world  and  to  be  clothed  upon  with  the 
heavenly  body.  Paul  is  the  apostle  of  faith ; 
and  this  faith  is  the  inner  connection  of 
the  believer  with  the  object  of  his  faith. 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  25 

As  the  inseparable  union  of  the  believer  with 
Christ,  he  considers  the  appropriation  of  that 
which  is  Christ's  already  in  the  present.  The 
future  can  only  complete  what  the  present 
has  already  given  to  him  of  the  glorious  ex- 
perience of  salvation. 

In  the  degree,  however,  that  this  is  per- 
ceived does  the  unsatisfactory  character  of 
the  essentially  eschatological  setting  of  the 
Pauline  Christology  appear.  It  must  also 
be  considered  that  Paul  has  not  taken  over 
into  his  ideal  world  the  most  important 
eschatological  idea  of  the  preaching  of  Jesus 
— that  of  the  Son  of  man.  In  addition  to 
the  eschatological  elements  of  the  apostle's 
belief  in  Christ,  which  in  their  importance 
must  certainly  not  be  depreciated,  one  will 
have  to  mention  others,  and  they  are  such 
which  for  the  apostle  constitute  for  all  time 
the  unchanging  norm  of  Christian  greatness. 

The  first  is,  that  Paul  experienced  Christ 
as  a  real  power  which  entered  his  life  and 
created  him  anew.  This  kind  of  experience, 
as  we  have  seen  above,  was  of  a  person  to  a 
person,  the  self-manifestation  of  the  heavenly 
Christ  to  the  apostle.  As  to  its  content,  Paul 
understood  this  experience  only  as  divine; 


26         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

and  here  lies  the  real  cause — that  he  puts 
Christ  not  on  the  side  of  humanity,  but 
ascribes  to  him  divinity.  What  he  received 
from  Christ  no  man  could  give  him,  but  only 
a  being  of  divine  origin  and  of  divine  power. 

It  belongs  to  every  science  to  explain  facts. 
Only  in  the  degree  that  it  is  successful  can 
we  be  satisfied  with  a  scientific  hypothesis; 
and  he  onl}^  can  obtain  a  position  relative  to 
the  questions  concerning  the  origin  of  the 
Christ  belief  who  himself  stands  within  this 
connection.  Whoever  will  understand  the 
poet,  must  go  to  the  poet's  land. 

From  the  consciousness  that  the  living 
Christ  has  also  apprehended  us  and  made  us 
his  possession,  can  we  tmderstand  the  con- 
viction of  the  apostle  that  the  new  experience 
in  his  life  was  not  planted  from  immanent 
causes,  but  by  the  supernatural  Christ.  But 
he,  who  from  the  start  rejects  a  Christ  who 
did  not  remain  in  death  but  who  rose  again 
and  is  exalted  to  God,  and  from  thence  makes 
known  to  his  people  his  royal  power,  will 
never  be  able  to  do  justice  to  the  apostle. 
But  let  not  him  who  occupies  that  position 
claim  that  he  alone  judges  scientifically. 
The  supreme  principle  of  this  mode  of  con- 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  27 

sideratlon  is  a  dogma  which  is  just  as  good 
as  any  other  dogma.  We  refer,  in  the  sense 
of  Paul,  to  the  nature  of  rehgious  experi- 
ence ;  for  this  rests  not  on  scientific  evidence, 
on  reasons  which  may  be  demonstrated,  but 
its  mighty  fortress  is  that  which  the  mind 
can  now  still  experience,  and  what  has  be- 
come efficacious  is  an  historical  reality. 
With  Paul  we  can  experience  the  fact  that 
we  have  a  Christ  in  heaven  who  is  rightly 
over  us.  From  Paul  we  can  learn  what 
God's  revelation  is  to  man :  a  creative  act, 
a  new  life,  the  effective  experience  of  a 
power  surpassing  and  overcoming  this  world. 
This  Christ  was  seen  by  the  apostle  in 
heavenly  brightness,  in  the  glory  of  the 
manifestation  of  God.  But  this  heavenly 
appearance  was  that  of  the  man  Jesus.  The 
Jesus  who  walked  on  this  earth  and  the 
heavenly  Lord  and  King  was  the  same  per- 
son. By  submitting  to  this  Christ,  Paul 
entered  into  connection  with  the  belief  of  the 
primitive  church;  for  it  were  an  entirely 
erroneous  opinion  should  one  assert  that 
Paul  was  the  first  who  affirmed  divine  predi- 
cates of  Jesus.  Even  the  older  apostles  only 
came  forth  with  the  preaching  of  Christ 


28         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

after  they  had  experienced  the  divine  power 
of  Jesus.  There  is  no  gospel  of  Christ  which 
did  not  preach  him  as  the  heavenly  Lord  and 
King.  The  same  men  who  sailed  with  Jesus 
on  the  Galilean  Sea  and  ate  and  drank  with 
Him,  had  proclaimed  with  death-defying 
courage  and  firm  gladness  the  same  Jesus  as 
the  Lord  who  was  exalted  to  the  right  hand 
of  God,  who  gave  his  people  divine  powers 
and  life  and  made  them  sure  of  heavenly 
perfection.  The  addresses  of  Peter  in  the 
first  part  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  bear 
eloquent  testimony  that  the  primitive  apos- 
tolic Christ-picture  was  also  eclipsed  by 
heavenly  splendor. 

But  the  primitive  apostles  also  did  not 
come  to  such  faith,  such  preaching  of  Jesus, 
by  accident.  For  their  wonderful  declara- 
tions they  have  a  very  solid  basis,  as  can  be 
ascertained  from  the  Synoptic  Gospels.  It 
is  not  in  this  that  Jesus  enjoyed  on  earth 
merely  an  inspired  human  consciousness. 
He  meant  to  be  more  than  a  hero  of 
humanity.  The  number  of  self-testimonies, 
depositions,  prophecies  and  miraculous  deeds 
can  only  be  explained  on  the  supposition  that 
Jesus  intended  to  manifest  by  them  his  divine 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  29 

authority  on  earth.  Already  on  earth  Jesus, 
with  full  consciousness  over  against  men, 
linked  himself  closely  to  a  union  with  God 
and  claimed  to  embody  God's  revelation  to 
humanity.  This  is  not  the  place  to  prove 
this  in  detail ;  but  the  most  important  is  to 
be  said.  Jesus  claimed  to  be  the  Messiah 
sent  of  God  and  to  fulfill  in  his  person  what 
the  Old  Testament  expected  of  the  appear- 
ance of  God  himself  at  the  end  of  the  ages. 
As  Son  of  man  he  exercised  on  earth  divine 
authority  in  forgiving  sin;  and  of  divine 
power  over  human  disease.  He  made  the 
lame  to  walk,  the  deaf  to  hear,  raised  the 
dead,  and  they  did  as  he  commanded.  He 
declared  that  to  him,  as  Son  of  man,  be- 
longed future  divine  power,  dominion  and 
dignity  and  the  judgment  of  the  world.  He 
knew  himself  as  the  Son  of  God  in  a  unique 
sense;  who  was  exalted  over  the  angels; 
whose  essence  no  one  knew  but  God,  the 
Father ;  who  stood  in  the  relation  of  mutually 
perfect  knowledge  with  the  Father;  who 
through  revelation  must  draw  men  into  his 
communion  with  God,  if  they  would  have 
part  in  it.  He  appeared  as  the  new  lawgiver 
of  his  own  authority,  not  like  the  prophets 


30         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

with  the  word  *'thus  saith  Jehovah,"  and 
depreciated  and  abohshed  what  in  the  Old 
Testament  did  not  answer  to  the  perfect  will 
of  God.  In  the  temple  he  acts  as  if  he  were 
its  Lord ;  he  is  more  than  the  temple ;  he  is 
Lord  also  of  the  Sabbath  day.  Men  shall 
be  judged  according  to  their  relation  to  him ; 
for  he  demands  belief  in  his  person.  True, 
that  he  walks  through  the  dark  valley  of 
suffering  and  death,  but  also  toward  the 
resurrection  and  the  heavenly  glory. 

These  elements  were  contained  in  the 
Christ-belief  which  Paul,  the  Pharisee,  per- 
secuted. He  oppressed  this  belief  because  it 
seemed  to  him  a  falsehood  and  false  testi- 
mony. But  he  must  have  known  the  Christ- 
preaching  of  the  primitive  church,  otherwise 
he  could  not  have  reasonably  persecuted  it. 
Yea,  the  fanatical  zeal  of  the  Pharisee  can 
historically  only  be  thus  understood,  that 
Paul  saw  clearer  than  his  contemporaries  the 
incompatibility  of  this  preaching  with  Jew- 
ish belief.  Before  Paul  became  a  Christian 
he  knew  that  a  new  principle  of  salvation 
had  entered  the  world,  that  Judaism  had 
received  its  death-blow  if  the  Christian 
preaching  rested  on  truth. 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  31 

But  from  the  epistles  of  the  apostle  it  can 
also  be  ascertained  that  the  historical,  human 
person  of  Jesus  stood  clearly  before  the  spir- 
itual eye  of  Paul.  It  has  been  tried  to 
enhance  this  proof  by  this,  that  one  imagined 
to  be  able  to  show  in  the  Pauline  Epistles  the 
traces  of  the  use  of  an  evangelical  tradition 
already  fixed  in  writing.  I  cannot  consider 
this  effort  as  successful.  Paul  knew  the  gos- 
pel matter  from  oral  teaching;  but  his 
knowledge  of  it  was  more  comprehensive 
than  appears  from  a  superficial  considera- 
tion. 

New  phenomena  produce  new  ideas.  Paul 
employed  the  term  agape,  love,  to  designate 
the  love  which  only  became  real  in  Chris- 
tianity. The  Old  Testament  indeed  knows 
God's  loving  disposition  toward  his  cove- 
nant-people and  the  demand  of  man's  love 
for  God  emanating  from  it,  but  not  however 
the  personal  loving  union  between  God  and 
man,  which  the  experience  of  salvation  in- 
volves. The  spirit  of  the  Greeks  knows  it 
not,  can  know  it  still  less  than  the  Old  Tes- 
tament, much  as  Plato  has  deepened  the  idea 
of  love  in  the  ''Banquet"  in  the  beautiful 
myth  of  Eros  the  son  of  poverty  and  of 


32         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

riches.  Paul,  and  after  him  John,  comprised 
in  this  word  what  to  them  was  the  deepest 
experience  of  the  Christian  state.  The  apos- 
tle feels  himself  apprehended  by  such  an 
overwhelming  love  of  God  in  Christ  that  he 
feels  himself  "constrained"  by  it  (2  Cor.  5. 
14);  the  meaning  is:  that  he  cannot  rid 
himself  of  the  power  of  this  experience;  it 
gives  him  his  life's  direction :  "Love,  I  give 
myself  to  thee,  thine  forever,  ever  thine  to 
be"  (Gal.  2.  20).  The  love  of  God  is  shed 
abroad  in  his  heart  by  the  Holy  Ghost  which 
is  given  unto  him  (Rom.  5.  5).  From  this 
love  no  earthly  and  no  angelic  power  can 
separate  him  (Rom.  8.  35). 

In  these  and  similar  statements  of  Paul 
the  love  of  Christ  and  of  God  in  the  death 
of  Christ,  stands  in  the  foreground  of  his 
reflection.  The  love  of  Christ  as  shown  in  his 
life  is  not  precluded.  On  the  contrary,  this 
latter  has  also  encircled  the  heart  of  the  apos- 
tle. In  Ephesians  4.  32 — 5.  2,  where  Paul  en- 
joins the  commandment  of  love,  the  elements 
of  the  evangelical  preaching  are  clearly  his 
basis.  Between  the  two  chapters  in  which 
the  apostle  instructs  the  Corinthians  on  the 
value  of  the  spiritual  gifts,  we  read  in  the 


Elements  of  Pauline  Chrlstology  33 

first  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians  a  chapter 
which  we  generally  call  the  Song  of  Songs 
of  love;  it  is  the  thirteenth.  It  is  rather 
out  of  the  connection  because  in  the  whole 
chapter  nothing  is  said  of  "love";  and 
yet  the  apostle  introduces  it  in  a  special  man- 
ner. He  just  said  that  not  all  have  the  same 
gifts,  not  all  can  be  apostles,  prophets,  teach- 
ers, etc.,  and  then  enjoins :  "but  covet  earn- 
estly the  best  gifts."  But  he  interrupts  him- 
self and  goes  on — "and  yet  shew  I  unto  you 
a  more  excellent  way,"  and  now  he  begins 
that  praise  of  love  which  has  not  its  equal 
in  the  entire  literature  of  the  world.  Whence 
did  he  derive  the  tunes  which  touch  our 
heart  like  the  music  of  the  spheres  ?  Behind 
everything  that  he  says  stands  the  historical 
form  of  the  great  Son  of  man.  The  first 
verses  already  contain  numerous  allusions  to 
words  of  Jesus  in  the  Synoptic  Gospels ;  then 
he  goes  on :  "Charity  suffereth  long,  and  is 
kind;  charity  envieth  not,  charity  vaunteth 
not  itself,  is  not  puffed  up ;  doth  not  behave 
itself  unseemly ;  seeketh  not  her  own,  is  not 
easily  provoked,  thinketh  no  evil;  rejoiceth 
not  in  Iniquity,  but  rejoiceth  In  the  truth; 
beareth  all  things,  believeth  all  things,  hopeth 


34         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

all  things,  endureth  all  things."  In  every 
feature  we  see  as  a  model  the  life  of  Jesus. 
There  is  no  other  model  for  such  a  descrip- 
tion; for  this  charity  did  not  exist  in  the 
world  before,  nor  contemporaneously  with, 
Jesus.  And  when  Paul  closes  the  chapter 
with  the  words:  "And  now  abideth  faith, 
hope,  charity,  these  three;  but  the  greatest 
of  these  is  charity,"  we  look  again  into-  the 
deepest  life-experience,  the  deepest  Christ- 
experience,  and  the  deepest  God-experience 
which  he  had.  Since  Christ's  appearance  in 
the  world,  we  know  that  charity  is  the  primi- 
tive force  of  God,  destined  to  permeate  and 
to  fill  the  whole  world. 

From  the  proof  of  love  In  the  life  of  Christ 
the  apostle  derived  directly  also  certain  moral 
principles  and  supreme  maxims  (Rom.  15. 
2  sq. ;  Phil.  2.  4  sqq. ;  i  Cor.  10.  33;  11.  i; 
Phil.  2.  20  sq. ;  Gal.  6.  2). 

An  important  feature  in  the  picture  which 
the  apostle  had  in  his  heart  of  the  earthly 
work  of  Christ,  is  that  of  suffering.  By  this 
is  not  meant  the  Atoning  death  which  Paul 
certainly  also  appreciated  In  Its  ethical  im- 
portance, but  the  fact  that  In  following 
Christ  the  thought  of  suffering  was  embodied 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  35 

in  the  Pauline  Christianity  as  an  inalienable 
momentum  of  the  ideal  of  life.  We  find  this 
thought  with  Paul  not  only  in  the  original 
phrase,  that  this  suffering  is  a  suffering  of 
Christ  himself,  or  on  behalf  of  Christ,  but 
he  clearly  also  refers  in  the  descriptions  of 
his  apostolic  sufferings  to  the  pattern  of 
Jesus.  Thus  i  Cor.  4.  8-13,  where  he  pre- 
sents the  commandments  of  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount,  to  endure  persecutions  (Matt. 
5.  II,  12),  and  to  bless  those  that  curse 
(Luke  6.  28),  as  being  fulfilled  in  his  apos- 
tolic life,  and  where  some  other  materials 
from  the  evangelic  tradition  are,  in  his  mind, 
as  types.  The  Lord  would  not  have  re- 
proached Paul  with :  "thou  mindest  not  the 
things  which  are  of  God,  but  of  men."  The 
precepts  which  Jesus  gave  to  his  disciples 
after  the  Messiah-confession  near  Csesarea 
Philippi  with  reference  to  the  sufferings 
which  should  follow  and  what  he  himself 
showed  in  his  life,  Paul  has  rightly  appre- 
hended and  presented  in  his  life ;  and  of  this 
element  of  the  Christian  life-ideal  it  may 
also  be  said  what  we  said  of  love,  Jesus  was 
the  first  who  taught  us  to  know  suffering 
in  its  full  ethical  importance.    Like  his  Mas- 


36         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

ter,  Paul  connects  most  intimately  the  obe- 
dience of  suffering  with  the  certainty  of  vic- 
tory and  the  grandeur  of  glorification.  Im- 
potency  and  weakness,  sufferings  and  humili- 
ations are  the  lot  of  the  Christian,  for  Christ 
also  was  crucified  through  weakness  (2  Cor. 
13.  4),  and  yet,  what  glorious  confidence  of 
victory  fills  the  apostle!  The  power  of 
Christ,  who  was  the  same  at  the  time  of 
earthly  humiliation  and  heavenly  exaltation, 
fills  him;  he  knows  that  it  will  also  lead 
him  to  the  goal.  That  the  Christian  must 
rejoice  in  suffering  and  persecution,  the  apos- 
tle shows  in  the  First  Epistle  to  the  Thessa- 
lonlans  and  especially  in  the  Epistle  to  the 
Philippians;  hence  it  is  certainly  an  after- 
effort  of  the  earthly  work  of  Christ  when 
Paul  (i  Thess.  5.  16-18)  finds  the  ideal  of 
the  Christian  life  in  this,  to  preserve  joyful- 
ness  in  all  conditions  of  life ;  to  always  have 
a  prayerful  frame  of  mind  and  thus  have 
cause  to  thank  God  in  every  station  of  life; 
for  he  says:  "This  is  the  will  of  God  in 
Christ  Jesus  concerning  you."  Just  this  will 
of  God  which  has  become  manifest  in  the  life 
of  Jesus  Christ. 

According  to  2  Thess.  3.  5,  w^e  also  find 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  2)7 

in  Christ^s  life  the  Christian  virtue  of  pa- 
tience, the  rehgious  manifestation  of  power, 
the  perseverance  which  results  from  the  con- 
sciousness of  overcoming  the  world.  The 
apostle  knows  that  Christ  in  his  earthly  life 
was  meek,  gentle  and  friendly,  and  he  feels 
the  implicit  obligation  to  apply  himself  to  the 
like  mind  in  following  his  Lord   (2  Cor. 

10.  i). 

Paul  wishes  to  be  considered  by  his  con- 
gregations as  a  model  of  moral  conduct  ( i 
Thess.  2.  10;  2  Thess.  3.  7,  9;  Phil.  3.  17). 
He  knows  the  deep  effect  and  the  conquering 
power  of  love  devoted  to  the  service  of  his 
fellow  man.  He  knows  that  this  is  the  surest 
proof  of  the  divine  truth  of  Christianity; 
hence,  he  also  says  (i  Thess.  i.  6;  i  Cor. 

11.  i)  that  in  this  he  only  follows  Christ. 
How  was  this  possible  unless  he  had  a  very 
concrete  picture  of  the  earthly  work  of  Jesus  ? 
Also  the  description  of  his  apostolic  office 
(2  Cor.  6)  is  only  an  image  of  the  earthly 
work  of  Jesus.  From  himself  or  from  reli- 
gious abstractions  Paul  had  found  neither 
this  ideal  nor  the  power  of  its  realization. 

The  character  of  the  entire  life  of  Jesus 
impressed  Paul  as  Christian,  as  being  divine. 


38         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

not  as  Pharisee,  for  this  life-ideal  is  different 
from  that  of  Pharisaism.  And  how  before 
his  conversion  could  he  have  been  able  to 
see  in  the  life  of  Jesus  a  divine  nature  since 
the  surest  principle  of  his  religious  thinking 
was  that  of  the  divinity  of  the  Jewish  law, 
and  he  could  not  think  of  considering  its 
Pharisaic  conception  as  ungodly,  as  Jesus 
did.  But  when  Paul,  as  Christian,  wishes  to 
educate  his  congregations  for  a  truly  godly 
character,  he  points  to  the  model,  Christ. 
Very  beautifully  is  this  done  (i  Thess.  4. 
1-3,  7).  The  object  of  the  Christian  state 
is  holiness,  the  opposite  of  uncleanness ;  for 
this  God  has  called,  who  himself  is  holy.  To 
such  character  Paul  exhorts  them  *'by  the 
Lord  Jesus" ;  he  gave  them  commandments 
"by  the  Lord  Jesus."  It  would  mean  much 
too  little  should  one  think  here  only  of  the 
teaching  of  Jesus,  perhaps  of  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount.  "To  exhort  by  the  Lord  Jesus" 
means,  to  exhort  from  the  life-communion 
with  Jesus,  and  the  commandments  which 
Paul  gave  through  the  agency  of  the  Lord 
Jesus  are  such,  which  in  the  person  of  Jesus 
had  been  a  living  reality.  The  same  refers  to 
the  "tradition  which  ye  received  of  us"  (2 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  39 

Thess.  ^.  6;2.  15).  These  are  the  evangelic 
traditions  and  the  moral  injunctions  result- 
ing therefrom.  In  Jesus  the  apostle  met  with 
divine  perfection  and  divine  holiness;  for 
says  he,  in  another  place — not  under  the 
influence  of  the  Jewish  Messianic  dogmatics, 
but  under  the  impression  of  his  new  creation 
through  the  historical  Christ — that  Jesus 
knew  no  sin  (2  Cor.  5.  21).  We  notice  in 
the  sublime  picture  of  Christ  which  lived  in 
the  apostle,  that  a  full  share  belongs  also  to 
the  humanity  of  Christ.  The  religious  con- 
viction of  Paul  of  the  divinity  of  Christ,  rests 
also  on  the  life  of  the  earthly  Jesus. 

All  the  different  constituent  parts  men- 
tioned before,  Paul  gathered  up  in  a  uniform 
picture  of  Christ.  The  coloring  of  the  de- 
scriptions of  the  second  coming  is  for  the 
most  part  borrowed  from  the  apocalyptics,  in 
a  lesser  degree  it  refers  back  to  Jesus  him- 
self. The  Davidic  sonship  of  Jesus  is  for 
Paul,  as  well  as  for  the  Judaism  of  his  time, 
a  postulate  of  the  Messianic  dogmatics.  The 
comprehension  of  Christ  as  the  last  Adam 
betrays  the  Jewish  scheme  of  thought ;  Alex- 
andrian typology  Is  found  in  this  that  he  sees 
the  preexistent  Christ  in  the  spiritual  work 


40         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

which  followed  in  the  wilderness.  Analogies 
in  the  religious  ideas  of  his  time  induced 
him  to  consider  Christ  as  the  mediator  of 
reconciliation,  also  of  the  entire  cosmos,  as 
the  power  which  is  destined  to  permeate  all 
beings,  be  they  in  heaven,  on  earth  or  under 
the  earth.  The  conception  also  of  Christ  as 
being  preexistent  with  God  before  his  ap- 
pearance on  earth,  has  certain  analogies  in 
ancient  contemporaneous  thinking. 

In  later  Jewish  theology  the  idea  of  the 
heavenly  preexistence  of  the  Messiah  is  not 
unknown,  but  it  plays  no  particular  part.  It 
meets  us  in  the  allegories  of  the  Book  of 
Enoch  and  the  apocalypse  of  Ezra,  and  then 
again  in  the  appendix  to  the  Pesitka  Rabbati, 
in  the  seventh  or  eighth  century.  In  Enoch 
and  in  4  Ezra,  the  Messiah  as  "Son  of  Man" 
is  preexistent.  The  name  of  the  Son  of  man 
is  mentioned  before  the  Lord  of  the  Spirits, 
ere  the  sun  and  the  signs  of  the  zodiac  were 
made  (Enoch  48.  3).  Since  the  idea  of  the 
Son  of  man  was  of  little  importance  for 
Paul,  he  can  hardly  have  been  influenced 
therewith. 

The  Synoptic  Gospels  contain  no  state- 
ments of  Jesus  concerning  his  preexistence, 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  41 

but  in  the  Gospel  of  John ;  words  Hke  "Before 
Abraham  was,  I  am"  (John  8.  58)  cannot  be 
invented.  Jesus  must  have  said  this ;  but  we 
cannot  prove  that  Paul  referred  to  self-testi- 
monies of  Christ  concerning  his  preexist- 
ence. 

Also  the  following  reflection  cannot  be 
proved  from  Paul:  the  Christian  who  ex- 
perienced the  divinity  of  Christ  must  con- 
clude that  this  Christ  is  radically  different 
from  us,  and  did  not  first  begin  to  exist  as 
man.  If  he  is  of  divine  nature,  he  existed 
ere  he  became  man.  One  does  not  become 
a  God,  one  is  God,  or  is  not  God. 

But  as  Son  of  God  Christ  was  preexistent, 
for  he  came  down  from  heaven  and  ascended 
again.  This  idea  may  in  our  days  be  con- 
sidered as  a  myth ;  indeed  with  higher  con- 
tents than  the  known  myths  of  the  Greek  and 
Oriental  sons  of  the  gods ;  but  one  finds  that 
it  must  be  positively  judged  after  the  anal- 
ogy of  the  narratives.  Paul  is  said  to  owe 
in  good  part  the  success  of  his  Christian 
preaching  in  the  Grseco-Roman  world  to  the 
circumstance  that  he  proclaimed  Christ  in  a 
manner  intelligible  also  to  the  Greeks  as  the 
Son  of  God. 


42         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

The  formal  analogy  with  Greek  and  Ori- 
ental myths  can  be  denied  as  little  as  the 
dependence  of  Paul  on  ancient  cosmology 
which  appears  in  this  idea.  But  Paul  him- 
self would  have  been  the  first  to  resist  being 
put  under  this  scheme  of  contemplation  with 
his  doctrine  of  the  divine  Sonship  of  Jesus. 
He  himself  would  have  pointed  out  the 
fundamental  difference  that  there  we  have 
embodiments"  of  human  thoughts  and  wants ; 
whereas  God  himself  came  to  men  in  his  Son 
Christ,  and  manifested  himself  to  them.  In 
all  passages  in  which  Paul  speaks  of  Christ 
as  the  Son  of  God,  even  where  reference  is 
made  to  preexistence,  the  emphasis  rests  on 
the  carrying  out  of  God's  work  of  salvation 
by  this  his  Son,  on  the  historical  agency  of 
the  earthly  Christ,  who  was  afterward  ex- 
alted to  God. 

For  this  reason  the  Pauline  understanding 
of  Jesus,  the  Son  of  God,  refers  in  the  main 
to  Jesus's  own  conception  of  his  divine  Son- 
ship,  as  it  can  be  elicited  from  the  Synoptic 
Gospels,  especially  Matt.  ii.  2j\  Luke  lo. 
22 ;  only  that  Paul  put  a  theological  dress  on 
that  which  was  with  Jesus  an  immediate 
consciousness. 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  43 

The  ancient  cosmology  of  a  spatial  heaven 
stretching  over  the  earth  we  have  no  more, 
but  we  also  lift  our  eyes  upward  to  God, 
from  whom  comes  our  help,  and  sing  of 
Christ : 

"Thou  hast  taken  thy  course  earthward 
And  gone  again  heavenward." 

Even  the  modern  man  can  do  no  other 
than  seek  God  in  Christ,  this  Christ  of  his- 
tory who  is  in  heaven  above  us. 

On  the  other  hand,  under  the  influence  of 
contemporary  philosophical  and  religious 
thoughts  of  Christ  as  Creator  of  the  world, 
this  understanding  is  not  based  on  the  world 
of  salvation  of  Christ,  but  it  was  natural  in 
comparison  with  definitions  of  the  world,  like 
the  Philonean  or  Gnostic-Oriental  specula- 
tions, in  which  such  mediators  between  God 
and  the  world  were  pushed  in,  to  assign 
Christ  a  parallel  position.  In  such  state- 
ments Paul  goes  indeed  beyond  the  line  of 
primitive  Christian  preaching.  In  that,  how- 
ever, as  concerns  the  description  of  the  work 
of  salvation  and  power  of  Christ,  the  differ- 
ence between  Paul  and  the  older  apostles  con- 
sists in  this,  that  Paul  brings  out  more  vivid- 


44         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

ly  what  already  existed  in  reality,  or,  that  the 
personal  Christ  experience  of  the  apostle 
Paul  was  larger  every  way  and  more  intense 
than  that  of  Christians  before  him. 

In  the  experience  of  salvation  founded  on 
the  person  of  Christ,  the  apostle  comprised 
also  certain  theological,  doctrinal  views,  the 
most  important  of  which  we  now  must  brief- 
ly sketch.  They  relate  to  the  doctrines  of 
redemption,  reconciliation,  and  justification 
by  faith.  If  they  concerned  only  the  per- 
sonal experience  of  the  apostle  in  his  conver- 
sion, the  heavenly  Christ,  who  drew  the 
apostle  into  his  communion  and  endowed 
him  with  his  Spirit,  Christ  who  rose  again 
would  be  the  cardinal  point  of  PauFs  theol- 
ogy, but,  as  a  Jew,  the  apostle  stood  within 
a  history  of  divine  revelation.  He  believed 
in  a  God  who  manifests  himself  in  the  world ; 
whose  will  must  be  known  from  his  historical 
deeds.  The  Messiah  on  the  cross  was  a  blas- 
phemous idea  to  Paul,  the  Jew,  but  when  he 
perceived  that  the  Son  of  God  did  indeed  die 
on  the  cross,  he  could  only  see  in  this  a  new, 
indeed  an  unheard  of,  revealing  act  of  God. 
Hence  the  cross  of  Christ  became  the  decisive 
historical  manifestation  of  God  in  his  the- 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  45 

ological  thinking.  In  his  theology  the  two 
by  no  means  homogeneous  principal  facts  of 
the  salvation-work  of  Christ,  the  death  on 
the  cross  and  the  resurrection,  interlaced  in 
a  wonderful  manner. 

redemption 

For  a  successful  theological  understanding 
of  Paul  we  must  take  a  retrograde  way  in 
the  real  doctrine  of  redemption  as  well  as  in 
the  Christology,  starting  from  his  Christian 
experience.  One  must  free  himself  from  the 
method  of  dogmatics  which  still  rule  the 
statements  of  Paulinism:  bondage  of  sin, 
redemption,  freedom.  From  the  act  of  God 
alone  in  giving  his  Son  to  the  cross,  Paul 
fully  perceived  the  guilt  of  humanity  before 
God.  He  perceived  this  also  because  he  felt 
himself  transferred  by  Christ  into  the  new 
sphere  of  freedom,  divine  adoption,  and  a 
life  filled  with  the  Spirit.  Only  as  a  new 
man  did  he  rightly  understand  his  former 
condition.  The  present  experience  of  the 
Christian  is  by  no  means  different.  No  un- 
redeemed man  knows  the  depth  of  human 
sin;  he  only  knows  who  is  renewed  by 
Christ. 


46         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

These  thoughts  come  out  strongest  in 
Rom.  8.  I  sqq.  The  keenness  of  the  antago- 
nism between  flesh  and  spirit  which  runs 
through  the  theology  and  anthropology  of 
Paul  does  not  rest  on  a  dualistic  philosophy, 
but  it  was  thus  formed  by  the  life-experience 
of  the  apostle  and  his  Judaico-historical  esti- 
mate of  the  death  of  the  flesh  of  the  Messiah 
on  the  cross. 

The  Son  of  God  put  on  the  same  sinful 
flesh  as  other  humanity.  As  Messiah  he  is 
the  second  Adam,  the  representative  of  entire 
humanity.  What  happens  to  him  is  effica- 
cious for  the  entire  humanity  standing  be- 
hind him.  God,  by  making  the  bearer  of  the 
sinful  flesh  die  on  the  cross,  delivered  him 
up  as  a  sin-offering,  and  pronounced  thereby 
the  sentence  of  destruction  on  the  sinful  flesh 
of  humanity.  Now  the  Spirit  rules  in  those 
who  belong  to  Christ.  Through  the  power 
of  the  Spirit  the  emotions  of  the  flesh  are 
kept  down.  The  Spirit  dwelling  in  us  will 
sometime  also  be  the  power  of  our  resurrec- 
tion. That  the  real  in  the  life  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  of  the  churches  remains  far  be- 
hind this  ideal  by  no  means  troubles  the 
apostle.    Here  we  see  the  power  of  his  divine 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  47 

faith.  God  has  acted  in  the  death  of  the  flesh 
of  Christ  and  shown  whither  his  will  tends. 
This  will  he  will  carry  out  with  sovereign 
power.  He  planted  the  new  life  in  Chris- 
tians, who  already  feel  that  the  transcendent 
Spirit  lives  and  works  in  them.  How  should 
God  leave  unfinished  the  work  which  he 
began  ? 

But  this  doctrine  contains  another,  that  of 
the  general  absolute  sinfulness  of  the  human 
soul.  This  also  is  not  a  result  of  philosophy 
nor  of  a  dualistic  conception  of  the  world. 
A  real  dualism  is  for  Paul  not  to  be  thought 
of,  considering  the  liveliness  and  depth  of 
his  divine  faith.  He  knows  no  second  princi- 
ple of  the  world  which  could  seriously  oppose 
the  power  of  God.  The  apostle  frequently 
even  claims  Satan  as  a  power  whose  work  is 
included  in  God's  government  of  the  world 
(i  Cor.  5.  5;  2  Cor.  12.  7;  i  Thess.  2.  18). 
Man  when  he  came  forth  from  the  hand  of 
God  was  good.  Sin  is  not  in  man  as  an 
essential  element  of  the  flesh,  but  is  a  power 
which  subsequently  entered  history.  Adam 
brought  it  into  the  world  and  ever  since  it 
has  obtained  sovereignty  over  the  entire 
human  race.     God  received  it  into  his  plan 


48         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

of  salvation.  But  he  punished  it  by  inflicting 
death  on  Adam  and  the  entire  human  race ; 
but  in  the  death  of  Christ  he  prepared  salva- 
tion which  abolished  the  first  sentence,  and 
through  Christ  he  appointed  life  as  the  sove- 
reign power  over  humanity  (Rom.  5.  17 
sqq. ) .  Thus  the  effect  of  the  death  of  Jesus 
as  the  head  of  humanity  and  of  his  transition 
to  heavenly  life  is  this,  that  before  the  bar 
of  God's  judgment  those  also  who  belong  to 
Christ  have  suffered  death  and  entered  into 
heavenly  life  (Eph.  2.  5  sq.). 

Just  as  we  were  redeemed  from  the  power 
of  the  flesh,  so  are  we  also  redeemed  through 
the  death  of  Christ  from  the  curse  of  the 
law  (Gal.  3.  13).  In  a  vicarious  manner 
Christ,  on  the  other  hand,  has  offered  him- 
self for  us.  The  Old  Testament  passage 
(Deut.  21.  22  sq.)  :  "and  if  a  man  have  com- 
mitted a  sin  worthy  of  death,  and  he  shall 
be  put  to  death,  and  thou  hang  him  on  a 
tree,  his  body  shall  not  remain  all  night  upon 
the  tree,  but  thou  shalt  in  any  wise  bury  him 
that  day;  for  he  that  is  hanged  is  accursed 
of  God/'  he  saw  fulfilled  in  Christ.  After 
Christ  hath  borne  for  us  the  curse,  this  law 
has  no  more  any  claim  on  us.     We  died 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  49 

according  to  the  sentence  of  the  law  and  for 
the  law  (Gal.  2.  19).  Christ  delivered  us 
also  from  the  power  of  darkness  (Col.  i. 
13)  ;  from  this  present  evil  world  (Gal.  i. 
4)  ;  he  spoiled  the  angelic  powers  in  whose 
power  is  the  law  (Col.  2.  15 ;  Gal.  4.  3),  that 
ruled  over  this  present  world  (i  Cor.  2.  8)  ; 
but  nowhere  in  these  passages  is  there  any 
lack  of  the  conviction  that  Christ,  his  Spirit, 
his  life,  has  now  become  powerful  in  us,  or 
that  we  are  transferred  into  his  kingdom. 

From  what  has  been  said  it  follows  that 
redemption  cannot  be  thought  of  as  being 
limited  to  Judaism.  If  the  death  of  Christ 
is  conceived  of  as  the  fundamental  destruc- 
tion of  the  sinful  flesh,  humanity  is  the 
object  of  redemption.  The  gospel  is  univer- 
sal. But  God's  purpose  of  salvation  is  also 
universal.  God  willed  that  the  entire  human- 
ity, Jew  and  Gentile,  should  be  saved,  those 
also  who  are  still  in  unbelief  (Rom.  11.  25 
sqq. ;  i  Tim.  2.  4).  In  the  end,  nothing  but 
the  will  of  God  is  to  rule  the  world.  This 
thought  also  finds  its  application  to  the 
angelic  powers  which  according  to  Paul  and 
the  notion  of  that  time  in  general  riile  in  the 
world.    These  are  already  deprived  of  their 


50         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 


• 


power  through  Christ,  as  we  have  seen 
above;  their  final  overthrow  is  the  task  of 
Christ  at  his  second  coming  (i  Cor.  15.  24 
sq.).  No  anti-godly  influence  shall  remain 
in  the  cosmos.  But  if  redemption  concerns 
the  entire  former  territory  of  these  powers, 
nature  also  has  a  part  in  it.  According  to 
Rom.  8.  19  sqq.,  irrational  nature  for  Adam's 
sake  has  through  God  become  subject  to  the 
curse  of  vanity,  under  which  it  groaneth  and 
travaileth  in  pain  like  man ;  but  it  shall  also 
be  delivered  from  this  bondage  to  the  glori- 
ous liberty  of  the  children  of  God.  The 
glory  of  God  shall  then  be  the  nature  of  man, 
of  angels  and  of  the  creation.  Thus  the 
Pauline  doctrine  of  redemption,  like  the 
Christology,  ends  with  the  central  and  uni- 
versal significance  of  Christ.  Christ,  as  the 
Creator,  is  also  the  Redeemer  of  the  univer- 
sal cosmos. 

RECONCILIATION 

In  various  intricate  relations  with  the  doc- 
trine of  the  redemption  and  parallel  to  it  we 
meet  in  Paul  the  conviction  of  reconciliation 
effected  through  Christ.  But  this  sphere  of 
ideas  differs  from  that  of  the  redemption  in 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  51 

this,  that  it  overwhehningly  characterizes  the 
work  of  God  for  man's  salvation  under  a 
special  point  of  view,  and  suggests  correct 
principles  of  conduct,  while  in  the  doctrine 
of  redemption  the  feeling  of  deliverance 
from  an  anti-godly  state,  that  is,  the  human 
side  of  the  consideration,  comes  out  more 
strongly.  Paul's  theistic  conception  of  the 
world  of  Paul  appears  fully  in  the  thought 
of  reconciliation. 

According  to  our  usage,  reconciliation  de- 
notes the  abolishment  of  an  enmity  existing 
between  persons  or  parties,  an  arrangement 
by  which  both  hitherto  hostile  parts  agree 
and  a  state  of  peace  is  brought  about.  This 
idea  cannot  be  applied,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
to  the  Pauline  doctrine  of  reconciliation. 
True,  Paul  speaks  of  God's  wrath  which 
rests  upon  the  pre-  and  extra-Christian 
world,  a  world  brought  into  the  bondage  of 
sin  and  a  life  of  vice  with  all  abominations 
resulting  therefrom  (Rom.  i.  18  sqq.,  also  i 
Thess.  2.  16).  Paul  speaks  of  this  wrath 
in  a  sense  that  man  before  his  reconciliation 
is  hated  of  God  (Rom.  11.  28;  5.  10).  Man 
also  shows  enmity  against  God  (Rom.  8.  7), 
which  is  ever  stirred  up  anew  because  of  his 


52         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

inability  to  fulfill  the  law  of  commandments 
(Eph.  2.  14,  15).  If  one  followed  up  these 
statements  it  would  appear  that  the  reconcili- 
ation is  a  change  in  God  as  well  as  in  men. 
God  would  perhaps  restrain  his  wrath  on 
account  of  the  expiatory  act  of  Christ  which 
satisfies  him ;  and  on  the  part  of  men  every- 
thing would  appear  as  being  removed  by  the 
death  of  Christ,  everything  that  led  them  in 
enmity  against  God :  sin,  law,  flesh. 

But  this  is  not  the  thought  of  the  apostle. 
Paul  does  not  consider  Christ  as  the  third 
party,  who  mediates  between  two  enemies 
and  makes  peace.  The  reconciling  work  of 
Christ  is  not  something  absolute,  independ- 
ent of  God,  to  which  God  had  to  submit  after 
it  had  been  done.  And  just  as  little  does 
Paul  consider  humanity  as  an  equally  entitled 
party,  beside  God,  who  had  the  liberty  of 
taking  a  friendly  or  hostile  attitude  toward 
God.  In  the  Pauline  doctrine  of  reconcilia- 
tion God  acts  entirely  free;  God,  and  he 
alone,  undertakes  the  work  of  reconciliation ; 
it  is  he  who  sent  Christ  to  bring  about  recon- 
ciliation, and  love  toward  the  world  is  the 
motive  which  moved  him  (Rom.  5.  8  sqq.). 
The  question  cannot  be  of  a  change  in  God ; 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  53 

that  a  wrathful  God  became  gracious.  But 
God  produced  a  relation  between  himself  and 
humanity  in  which  he  could  show  himself 
merciful  to  them.  On  this  account  the  term 
"reconciliation"  is  inadequate,  and  like  the 
"wrath  of  God"  expresses  something  anthro- 
pathic.  In  PauFs  ideas  of  reconciliation  the 
very  eminence  and  free  grace  of  God  over 
against  the  creature  is  beautifully  expressed. 
To  be  sure,  God's  attitude  toward  humani- 
ty prior  to  reconciliation  is  different  from 
that  after  reconciliation.  Before,  God  in  his 
long-suffering  allowed  transgressions  to  pass 
on  or  he  revealed  his  wrath  because  of 
human  sin.  As  a  righteous  God,  who  must 
hate  and  punish  sin  as  an  anti-godly  thing, 
this  attitude  toward  humanity  was  not  final. 
In  the  death  of  Christ,  in  making  him  to  be 
sin  for  us,  who  knew  no  sin  (2  Cor.  5.  21), 
God  showed  that  he  had  destroyed  sin  in 
Christ.  Therefore  on  this  account  the  cross 
of  Christ  stood  visibly  and  publicly  as  the 
means  of  propitiation  established  by  God  for 
humanity  (Rom.  3.  25).  God's  judicial 
righteousness  was  satisfied  by  the  death  of 
Christ.  In  his  Son  he  showed  that  the  moral 
constitution  of  the  world  must  be  satisfied; 


54         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

but  the  Son  of  God  did  not  succumb  in  this 
judgment,  he  came  forth  victor.  Whoever, 
with  reference  to  this  divine  judgment  itself, 
now  feels  himself  subject  to  like  sentence, 
unto  him  God  for  Christ's  sake  counts  not 
sin;  but  regards  him  as  if  he  died  with 
Christ  the  death  of  sinners. 

The  apostolic  office  is,  therefore,  called  the 
"ministry  of  reconciliation"  (2  Cor.  5.  18). 
To  humanity  the  call  is  issued  "to  be  recon- 
ciled to  God/'  that  is,  to  accept  what  God 
offers  and  to  enter  into  a  state  of  peace  with 
God.  Humanity  has  nothing  else  to  do  than 
to  submit  to  this  new  order  of  God;  and 
where  this  is  the  case  there  is  peace  between 
God  and  humanity  (Rom.  5.  10,  11).  Be- 
fore God  man  stands  holy,  unblamable,  un- 
reprovable  (Col.  i.  22),  and  is  in  possession 
of  the  sure  expectancy  of  the  completion  of 
salvation  in  the  life  to  come  (Rom.  5.  11). 

The  range  of  the  work  of  reconciliation  is 
as  luiiversally  conceived  of  by  the  apostle  as 
that  of  redemption,  because  reconciliation 
also  rests  on  the  blessing  of  the  death  of 
Christ.  In  Christ  God  reconciled  "the 
world"  unto  himself  (2  Cor.  5.  19).  The 
heathen,   like  the  Jews,   have  part   in  the 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  55 

reconciling  work  of  Christ  who,  in  his  own 
body,  reconciled  both  parts  of  humanity  on 
the  cross ;  made  them  a  new  humanity  and 
in  one  Spirit  obtained  for  them  access  to 
God  (Eph.  2.  14  sqq.).  In  like  manner  also 
the  angelic  powers,  standing  behind  all  earth- 
ly things,  ruling  the  cosmos,  are  reconciled 
through  the  blood  of  the  cross  of  Christ. 
Peace  has  been  made  in  heaven  as  well  as 
upon  earth  (Col.  i.  20). 

JUSTIFICATION  AND  FAITH 

Under  the  influence  of  the  Lutheran 
Reformation  Paul's  doctrine  of  justification 
is  still  considered  as  the  real  coinage  of  the 
Pauline  doctrine  of  salvation.  The  being 
"justified  by  faith  only,"  personal  experi- 
ence, the  war-cry  and  victorious  banner  of 
Luther  fighting  against  Roman  perversion 
of  the  gospel,  is  regarded  as  the  preaching 
by  which  Paul  also  subdued  the  world  of 
his  time  for  Christianity.  And  yet  the  idea 
of  justification  is  only  one  of  the  different 
forms  in  which  the  Christian  faith  of  the 
apostle  clothed  itself.  In  so  far  as  justifica- 
tion concerns  an  act  of  God,  the  doctrine  is 
parallel  to  reconciliation,  redemption,  salva- 


56         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

tion.  As  far  as  the  religious  experience  of 
man  is  considered,  the  same  content  is  found 
in  forgiveness  of  sin,  reception  of  life,  regen- 
eration, divine  adoption.  But  as  little  as  in 
the  alleged  parallels  shall  we  find  a  real 
systematic  doctrine  in  the  thought  of  justi- 
fication as  taught  by  Paul.  We  shall  soon 
see  that  this  sphere  of  ideas  of  Paul  does 
not  contain  firmly  united,  systematically 
arranged,  thought-connections.  There  is 
rather  a  loose  construction  of  religious 
thoughts  which  are  applied  once  this  way, 
then  another  way;  then  joined  to  already 
given  ideas  and  finally  leading  to  a  recast, 
yea,  to  a  breaking  up  of  the  old  material. 
Only  in  an  accomodatiye  way  can  one  speak 
of  a  doctrine  of  justification  by  Paul. 

The  proposition  of  justification  by  faith 
was  formed  by  Paul  in  polemics.  It  is  the 
Christian  antithesis  to  the  Jewish  perversion 
of  the  fundamental  relation  of  a  man  to  God. 
In  no  other  proposition  does  the  fundamen- 
tal difference  of  Christianity  and  Judaism  be- 
come so  significantly  obvious  as  in  the  asser- 
tion that  man  is  justified  by  faith  and  not 
by  works.  Since  Luther  had  to  oppose  a  like 
perversion  of  religion  in  theCatholic  Church, 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  57 

he  put  this  PauHne  proposition  in  the  center 
of  his  teaching  and  made  it  the  material-prin- 
ciple of  Protestantism. 

The  Greek  term  for  our  "to  justify"  be- 
longs not  alone  to  biblical  language ;  it  de- 
notes generally  "to  judge  favorably/'  "to 
deem  righteous,"  "to  treat  as  righteous,"  and 
this  IS  in  consequence  of  a  formal  examina- 
tion or  judicial  decision.  In  the  Old  Testa- 
ment and  post-canonical  Judaism,  this  word 
is  referred  to  the  religious  sphere  of  life,  and 
generally  denotes  the  sentence  which  God 
passes  in  the  Messianic  final  term,  or  at  the 
close,  or,  also  in  the  course  of  life,  upon  man 
and  his  acts.  Justification  expresses,  then, 
the  acknowledgment  of  actual  righteousness, 
whether  it  be  perfect  or  not.  The  Jew,  he 
who  belongs  to  the  covenant-people,  who  in 
the  main  has  done  what  God  required  of  him, 
may  expect  from  God  a  verdict  of  justifica- 
tion. Solomon  prayed  (i  Kings  8.  32, 
LXX)  :  "Judge  thy  people  Israel,  that  the 
wicked  be  declared  wicked,  and  justifying 
the  righteous,  to  give  him  according  to  his 
righteousness."  In  this  sense  of  acknowl- 
edging the  actual  righteousness  of  man 
through  God,  occurs  the  term  "to  justify" 


58         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

(Jas.  2.  21,  24,  25)',  which  represents  the 
Jewish  doctrine  of  justification,  also  by  Paul, 
Rom.  2.  13;  3.  20;  Gal.  2.  16;  also  i  Tim. 
3.  16. 

But  the  Judaism  of  that  time  no  longer 
stood  on  the  height  of  belief  in  the  gracious 
God  as  he  appears  in  the  Prophets  and  in 
the  Psalms,  ready  to  forgive  sins  and  to 
cover  up  guilt.  Judaism  understood  the  rela- 
tion of  man  to  God  as  a  mutual  covenant- 
relation  from  a  judicial  point  of  view.  God 
gave  his  people  the  law  and  ritual,  now  it 
depended  on  man  whether  he  would  live 
according  to  the  ordinances  of  God  or  not. 
God,  it  was  thought,  kept  an  account  of  every 
man  according  to  the  state  of  the  debit  and 
credit  we  should  expect  in  the  course  of  life, 
and  at  its  close  God  gave  his  decree  which 
would  either  condemn  man  or  reward  his 
righteousness. 

Here  Paul  stepped  in  with  a  new  under- 
standing of  justification.  This  view  ren- 
dered to  God  what  belonged  to  him ;  directed 
man  to  perfect  subordination  under  God; 
excluded  every  wrong  relation  of  religion 
and  morality,  and  delivered  man  from  the 
torment  of  perpetual  uncertainty  of  salva- 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  59 

tion.  Paul,  too,  uses  the  term  "to  justify"  in 
a  forensic  sense,  that  is,  it  is  borrowed  from 
legal  language.  He  also  conceives  it  as  the 
principal  concern  of  the  godly  to  obtain 
the  justifying  judgment  of  God;  but  in 
harshest  opposition  to  Jewish  legal  views,  to 
all  human  legal  practice,  even  against  God's 
own  legal  rules — "keep  thee  far  from  a  false 
matter;  and  the  innocent  and  righteous  stay 
not,  for  I  will  not  justify  the  wicked"  (Exod. 
2^.  7) — Paul  demands  belief  in  God  who 
justifieth  the  ungodly  (Rom.  4.  5).  This 
demand  stands  in  connection  with  the  new 
idea  of  righteousness  which  Paul  obtained  as 
a  Christian.  For  it  must  be  insisted  that 
the  Greek  expression  "to  justify"  is  not  con- 
nected with  right  but  with  righteousness,  and 
"to  declare  as  righteous"  denotes  "to  judge 
as  righteous."  But  the  fact  also  exists,  that 
Paul  put  into  that  term  its  opposite;  and 
thus  cancelled  the  original  idea. 

Paul  had  to  learn  that  aspiration  after 
one's  own  righteousness  is  vain,  and  that 
man  must  receive  everything,  even  his  right- 
eousness, from  God.  His  particular  under- 
standing of  justification  is  also  traced  back 
to  his  experience  before  Damascus.     When 


6o         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

this  is  imderstood  the  exaggerations  of  the 
eschatological  conception  of  justification 
which  one  must  read  again  and  again  in  bib- 
lical theologies  and  dissertations  on  justifica- 
tion fall  to  pieces.  But  the  statistical  record 
of  his  statements  should  teach  something  bet- 
ter. Paul  speaks  of  future  justification,  set- 
ting aside  those  passages  in  which  he  moves 
on  the  ground  of  the  Jewish  doctrine  of  justi- 
fication, in  Gal.  5.  4-6;  Rom.  3.  30,  and  4. 
24;  5.  19 ;  I  Cor.  4.  4  sq. ;  but  of  the  present 
already:  Gal.  2.  16,  17;  3.  8,  24;  Rom.  3.  24, 
26,  28 ;  4.  5 ;  8.  33 ;  and  even  in  the  past  the 
apostle  imagines  it  as  having  taken  place: 
I  Cor.  6.  II ;  Rom.  5.  i,  9;  also  8.  30.  The 
ministry  of  the  New  Covenant  is  the  minis- 
try of  righteousness  (2  Cor.  3.  9),  that  is,  a 
ministry  which  works  and  diffuses  righteous- 
ness in  the  present.  The  righteousness  of 
God  which  works  faith  and  comes  from  faith 
is  a  revealed  one  (Rom.  i.  17;  3.  21)  ;  it  is 
a  reality  in  the  world ;  the  Christian  preach- 
ing makes  it  indigenous  in  humanity  and 
accessible  for  all  (i  Cor.  i.  30;  2  Cor.  5.  21 ; 
Rom.  5.  17;  10.  4  sqq.,  10). 

In  the  doctrine  of  justification  as  in  other 
spheres  of  the  Pauline  conception  of  salva- 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  6i 

tion,  the  eschatological  mode  of  considera- 
tion is  of  unmistakable  importance,  because 
Paul  expects  the  full  enjoyment  of  salvation 
only  in  the  future.  But  that  which  gives  the 
peculiar  stamp  to  his  preaching  is  here  not 
eschatology  but  the  consciousness  of  enjoy- 
ing blessedness  already  in  the  present;  the 
overwhelming  feeling  of  happiness  in  being 
already  free  from  judgment  and  of  experi- 
encing God's  justification.  God  called  him, 
the  worker,  to  the  kingdom  of  his  Son.  This 
took  place  not  because  Paul,  as  a  pious  Jew, 
took  the  law  of  God  as  the  guide  of  his  life, 
but  in  stern  opposition  to  his  legal  endeavor. 
For  this  life-experience  the  Pauline  antithe- 
sis is  already  explained  as  "not  by  works  of 
the  law."  Paul  had  to  assert  this  with  all 
emphasis  when  the  gospel  of  grace  which  he 
preached  was  opposed,  and  one  demanded 
as  a  second  principle  of  salvation  the  doing 
of  the  law  in  the  name  of  Christianity  in 
addition  to  the  grace  of  God.  With  all  em- 
phasis and  without  yielding  the  breadth  of  a 
finger,  Paul  maintains  here  the  proposition 
against  Judaism  and  Jewish  Christianity: 
"we  are  justified  freely  by  the  grace  of  God" 
(Rom.  3.  24;  Titus  3.  7). 


62         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

To  the  question:  Whence  comes  man's 
righteousness?  Paul  has  only  one  answer: 
From  God!  He  is  righteous  to  whom  God 
gives  his  righteousness.  This  righteousness 
in  general  cannot  be  obtained  in  any  other 
way  than  by  God  himself,  by  passing  his  sen- 
tence on  man :  I  regard  thee  as  righteous. 

Without  any  secondary  qualification,  Paul 
can  trace  the  entire  course  of  human  salva- 
tion to  the  act  of  God :  "For  whom  he  did 
foreknow,  he  also  did  predestinate  to  be  con- 
formed to  the  image  of  his  Son,  that  he 
might  be  the  firstborn  among  many  brethren. 
Moreover,  whom  he  did  predestinate,  them 
he  also  called :  and  whom  he  called,  them  he 
also  justified :  and  whom  he  justified,  them 
he  also  glorified''  (Rom.  8.  29,  30).  All 
these  divisions  lie  in  the  part  God  has  ren- 
dered them.  His  counsel  in  favor  of  glorify- 
ing humanity  is  unchangeable;  thus  every- 
thing, though  not  yet  fulfilled  in  reality,  is 
absolutely  certain.  God's  salvation-decree 
entered  into  historical  manifestation  which 
includes  the  justification  of  man,  in  Christ, 
his  Son.  God  made  him  to  be  sin  that  we 
might  be  made  the  righteousness  of  God  in 
him  (2  Cor.  5.  21).    Here  the  question  is 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  63 

not  of  a  doing  of  men ;  God  alone  acts.  In 
the  death  on  the  cross  he  put  the  whole 
human  sin  on  his  Son,  that  as  judge  he  could 
transfer  to  us  his  own  righteousness  which 
was  incarnated  in  his  Son ;  and  we,  who  for- 
merly were  all  sin,  now  wholly  become  in 
Christ  the  righteousness  of  God.  In  like 
manner  the  apostle  speaks  (Rom.  5.  16,  18) 
of  the  bringing  about  of  God's  purpose  of 
salvation  in  humanity,  without  assigning  any 
part  to  man  in  the  realization.  Over  against 
God's  sentence  of  condemnation  on  entire 
humanity  because  of  the  transgression  of  the 
one,  stands  the  sentence  of  justification 
which  leads  to  life,  after  the  second  head  of 
humanity  has  rendered  the  decisive  act  of 
obedience  on  the  cross.  According  to  Rom. 
5.  9,  men  are  now  being  justified  in  like  man- 
ner **by  the  blood"  of  Christ,  that  is,  in  con- 
sequence of  the  expiatory  death  of  Christ, 
God  passed  the  decree  of  righteousness  on 
humanity.  The  strange  phrase,  Rom  4.  25 : 
Christ  "was  raised  again  for  our  justifica- 
tion" means  nothing  else.  The  raising  again 
of  Christ  IS  presented  as  a  consequence  of 
God's  sentence  of  acquittal  and  justification 
on  men  because  of  the  atoning  work  of 


64         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

Christ.  Finally  the  death  and  raising  again 
of  Jesus  (Rom.  8.  33)  are  also  a  cause  of 
God's  justification  on  humanity  conceived  of 
as  lasting ;  and  here  also  we  read  nothing  of 
man's  attitude. 

From  the  passages  referred  to  we  obtain 
the  qualification  of  justification.  This  takes 
place  *'in  Christ"  (2  Cor.  5.  21),  and  "by 
his  blood"  (Rom.  5.  9)  ;  according  to  Gal. 
2.  17,  it  is  also  the  effort  of  the  Christian  to 
be  justified  *'by  Christ" ;  for  those  who  live 
in  Christ  Jesus  need  fear  no  condemnation 
(Rom.  8.  i).  The  justification  of  man  takes 
place  "in  the  name  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
and  by  the  Spirit  of  our  God"  (i  Cor.  6. 
11)  ;  and  in  i  Cor.  i.  30  Christ  himself  is 
called  our  righteousness.  As  the  basis  of 
God's  justifixation,  Paul  mentions  once  the 
sacrificial  work  of  Christ,  oftener  however 
the  fact  of  being  in  Christ.  The  being  in 
Christ  he  puts  in  opposition  (Gal.  5.  4;  3. 
1 1 )  to  the  power  of  the  law.  He  evidently 
means  that  justification  takes  place  every- 
where, where  Christ  is  with  his  power,  his 
work,  his  life. 

It  means  nothing  else  when  Paul  speaks 
of  "justification  by  faith"  (Gal.  2.  t6;  3.  8, 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  65 

24;  Rom.  3.  30;  5.  i)  ;  or  "by  faith"  (Rom. 
3.  30;  Gal.  2.  16)  ;  or,  "in  virtue  of  faith" 
(Rom.  3.  28).  Faith  has  with  Paul  various 
modifications  of  meaning,  but  he  puts  the 
most  pregnant  meaning  into  this  idea  where 
he  makes  it  the  content  of  his  Christian  ex- 
perience of  salvation.  This  idea  of  faith  is 
found  everywhere,  where  Paul  puts  justifica- 
tion in  reference  to  faith.  There  faith  is  a 
joining  together  of  man  with  Christ  in  an 
indissoluble  unit.  One  would  say  much  too 
little  should  he  take  this  Pauline  salvation- 
belief  as  a  personal  disposition,  as  confidence 
or  trust.  No,  it  is  the  apprehension  of  and 
the  adhering  to  Christ  with  all  that  he  has 
included  in  his  gifts  of  salvation.  It  is  such 
a  close  union  of  man  with  Christ  that  he 
can  no  more  be  thought  of  as  being  separated 
from  him.  Where  man  is,  there  also  is 
Christ.  When  God  regards  and  judges  the 
believing  man,  it  is  as  if  Christ  were  in- 
cluded also. 

With  justification  the  whole  of  salvation 
is  given  to  sinful  man:  Hence  justification 
enters  into  an  inner  relation  to  other  ideas 
in  which  Paul  also  presents  the  thought  of 
redemption.    Justification  and  reconciliation 


66         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

stand  parallel  (Rom.  5.  9  sqq.),  and  assure 
safe  redemption.  Paul  can  well  say:  "he 
who  is  justified,  shall  be  saved";  as  also: 
"he  who  is  reconciled,  shall  be  saved."  Sal- 
vation, however,  he  explains  as  an  entrance 
into  the  life  of  God  (Titus  3.  5,  7).  The 
divine  acts  of  saving  and  justifying  are 
identical,  they  are  an  emanation  of  the  grace 
of  God  and  have  for  their  end  that  we  be- 
come heirs  of  God  and  obtain  the  hope  of 
eternal  life.  According  to  2  Cor.  5.  20  sq., 
man  who,  in  the  death  of  Christ,  accepts  the 
offered  reconciliation,  receives  the  righteous- 
ness of  God  in  life-communion  with  Christ. 
In  Rom.  10.  9  sq.  the  ideas  of  justification 
and  salvation  promiscuously  change.  The 
gospel  brings  salvation  to  every  believer  be- 
cause the  righteousness  of  God  is  revealed  in 
him  (Rom.  i.  16,  17).  The  idea  of  redemp- 
tion is  also  connected  (Rom.  3.  24)  with 
justification ;  justification  takes  place  through 
the  mediation  of  the  redemption  existing  in 
Christ. 

The  justification  of  man  consists  in  the 
forgiveness  of  sins.  In  a  classical  manner 
Paul  demonstrated  this  (Rom.  4.  5  sqq.). 
Unto  the  man  who  relies  not  on  works  but 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  dy 

believes  in  God,  who  justifies  the  wicked, 
this  beHef  is  imputed  as  righteousness.  This 
declaration  the  apostle  corroborates  by  an 
Old  Testament  quotation  from  Psa.  32.  1,2: 
"Blessed  is  he  whose  transgression  is  for- 
given, whose  sin  is  covered.  Blessed  is  the 
man  unto  whom  the  Lord  imputeth  not 
iniquity."  From  this  quotation  Paul  infers 
that  God  imputeth  righteousness  unto  him 
who  is  thus  pronounced  as  blessed.  The  for- 
giveness of  sins  is  accordingly  not  only 
something  negative  but  it  includes  also  the 
imputation  of  the  positive  saving  effect  of 
righteousness.  But  righteousness  stands  for 
the  apostle  in  just  as  inseparable  a  relation 
to  "life,"  that  is,  to  divine  life,  as  sin  does 
to  death  (Rom.  5.  12  sqq.).  Where  right- 
eousness is,  there  also  is  life  and  blessed- 
ness. The  ministration  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment is  called  (2  Cor.  3.  9)  the  ministry  of 
righteousness;  in  the  preceding  verse  the 
ministration  of  the  Spirit;  but  according  to 
verse  6,  the  Spirit  giveth  life.  Thus :  where 
righteousness  is,  there  is  Spirit ;  where  Spirit 
is,  life  is.  In  Col.  2.  13  also,  the  apostle  has 
perceived  the  giving  of  life  to  Christians  in 
communion  with  Christ  in  this,  that  God 


68         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

has  forgiven  them  all  transgression  and  blot- 
ted out  the  handwriting  of  ordinances  that 
were  against  them.  In  i  Cor.  15.  54-57  the 
apostle  rejoices  that  with  the  removal  of  sin 
through  Jesus  Christ,  that  is,  in  God's 
declaration  of  justification  resting  on  the 
death  of  Christ,  victory  over  death  and  life 
immortal  has  been  given  to  humanity.  In 
Gal.  3.  8  sqq.  the  fundamental  thought  of  the 
discussion  is  this,  that  in  justification  the 
entire  blessing  is  included ;  hence  the  apostle 
puts  also  baptism,  the  act  of  incorporating 
the  believer  into  the  Christian  Church,  in 
inner  relation  to  justification.  In  i  Cor.  6. 
II,  he  adds  in  a  parallel  that  the  Christians 
were  washed,  that  is,  that  they  were  bap- 
tized; that  they  were  sanctified,  and  justi- 
fied; accordingly,  baptism,  sanctification, 
and  justification  appertain  to  one  another. 
Also  the  act  of  regeneration,  that  is,  the 
renewal  of  man  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  Paul 
identifies  (Titus  3.  5-7)  with  the  act  of  jus- 
tification and  conceives  of  both  divine  acts 
as  having  taken  place  in  baptism.^ 


^The  author  here  interprets  Paul  in  harmony  with  the 
teaching  of  the  Lutheran  Church,  but  for  a  clear  expo- 
sition of  the  Apostolic  teaching  see  Dr.  Whedon's  note  on 
Titus  3.  5-7  in  Whedon's  Commentary. — Editor. 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  69 

Having  shown  the  main  thoughts  of  the 
PauHne  teaching  of  justification  we  may 
now  obtain  a  number  of  results  for  an  esti- 
mate of  the  CathoHc  and  evangeHcal  con- 
ception of  justification,  as  "well  as  for  ques- 
tions which  our  present  dogmatical  science 
connects  with  the  doctrine  of  justification. 

According  to  its  nature,  justification  is 
a  declarative  act  of  God.  He  declares  he 
regards  man  as  righteous  because  of  the 
atoning  death  of  Christ,  which  blotted  out 
the  sin  of  humanity.  Neither  the  Catholic 
understanding  as  "infusion"  of  grace,  nor 
that  of  the  so-called  biblical  school  of  Beck 
as  a  communication  of  active  righteousness, 
can  be  considered  as  correct.  Man  who  is 
justified  by  God  is  rather  still  a  sinner  in  the 
sense  of  Paul,  after  this  declaration  has  been 
made.  With  a  general  intuition  Luther 
touched  the  view  of  the  apostle  when  he 
says  in  the  vSmalcald  articles  (13),  that  God 
"for  the  sake  of  Christ,  our  Mediator,  will 
consider  and  does  consider  us  as  wholly 
righteous  and  holy.  Though  the  sin  in  the 
flesh  has  not  yet  entirely  disappeared  and  is 
dead,  yet  he  will  not  avenge  nor  know  it."^ 

*  See  Miley,  Systematic  Theology. — Editor. 


70         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

The  wrong  understanding  of  Paul  in  the 
CathoHc  Church  is  connected  with  the  un- 
PauHne  notion  of  faith  which  prevails  there. 
According  to  Roman  Catholic  teaching, 
faith  is  the  ground  and  condition  of  divine 
justification.  Faith  appropriates  righteous- 
ness by  that  alone,  that  it  is  not  confined  to 
knowledge  but  also  fashions  the  will  and 
works  fear  of  God's  righteousness,  hope  in 
his  mercy,  beginning  of  love,  contrition  and 
repentance.  Only  when,  by  the  grace  of 
God,  faith  becomes  operative  in  the  will  does 
it  obtain,  according  to  Catholic  teaching,  the 
grace  of  justification.  But  by  this  notion 
justification  has  been  molded  into  a  dog- 
matic doctrine,  which  is  not  so  with  Paul. 
What  the  apostle  expresses  in  different  man- 
ner is  squeezed  into  a  fixed  form ;  and  what 
Paul  understands  by  justifying  faith,  is 
turned  into  its  opposite,  for  faith  becomes 
again  a  work. 

We  have  seen  that  Paul  described  justi- 
fication as  an  act  of  God  without  considering 
the  conduct  of  man.  He  can  put  the  sen- 
tence of  justification  into  the  past,  present 
and  future.  He  can  connect  it  with  baptism 
and  regeneration.    He  does  not  present  quite 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  71 

formally  the  relation  of  faith  to  justification. 
Faith  is  for  him  a  presupposition,  a  means ; 
once  also  (Rom.  3.  28)  ground  of  justifica- 
tion. And  yet  it  is  a  perversion  of  the  true 
meaning  of  the  apostle  to  present  faith  as  the 
beginning  of  salvation.  In  his  polemics 
against  Judaism  he  used  that  term  "in  vir- 
tue of  faith,"  which  caused  such  a  great 
misconception.  Paul  means  there  also 
nothing  more  than  this,  that  where  there 
is  faith,  comes  God's  declaration  of  justifica- 
tion, not  where  works  are;  but,  of  course, 
not  the  faith  which  is  an  act  of  man — as 
the  Roman  teaching  describes  it — but  the 
faith  which  is  wrought  by  God  in  man  and 
constrains  man  to  withdraw  wholly  from 
himself  and  to  apprehend  Christ,  to  put  him 
on,  and  thus  appear  well-pleasing  before 
God.  When  Paul  once  calls  such  faith  the 
ground  of  justification,  the  connection  makes 
it  very  clear  how  the  apostle  wishes  to  be 
understood. 

But  the  opinion  that  God  is  satisfied  with 
faith  or  good  will  as  a  lesser  performance 
instead  of  actual  obedience,  bitterly  wrongs 
the  apostle.  Saving  faith  for  the  apostle  is 
never  a  somewhat  valuable  performance,  but 


72         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

is  always  the  opposite  of  all  performance. 
It  is  connection  with  the  person  of  Christ. 
With  this  meaning  also  nothing  is  gained; 
for  the  foundation  of  our  salvation  would 
be  yet  a  "work";  besides  a  "work"  which 
man  could  produce  still  less  by  his  own 
strength  than  by  active  obedience. 

In  pursuance  of  this  understanding  of  jus- 
tification by  faith,  according  to  the  Pauline 
view,  it  gains  further  importance  as  Luther 
rightly  apprehended  and  expressly  asserted. 

The  justification  of  Paul  contains  more 
than  the  mere  declaration  of  God,  that  for 
Christ's  sake  he  regards  the  sinner  as  right- 
eous. God  laid  our  sins  upon  Christ  that  in 
communion  with  Christ  we  might  be  made 
the  righteousness  of  God  (2  Cor.  5.  21). 
This  is  not  to  be  understood  in  the  sense  of 
imputation  only,  but  also  as  active  righteous- 
ness ;  for  a  life-communion  with  Christ  can 
be  interpreted  in  no  other  way  than  that  it 
is  followed  by  a  new  existence  and  a  corre- 
sponding activity.  When  Paul  says :  "Christ 
lives  in  us,"  he  means  Christ  pervades  us 
with  all  his  powers.  When  Paul  (2  Cor.  3.  9) 
calls  the  ministration  of  the  New  Covenant 
the    ministration    of    righteousness,    active 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  73 

righteousness  is  also  included  because  this 
ministration  is  conceived  of  as  the  ministra- 
tion of  the  Spirit  (2  Cor.  3.  6).  Says  Paul 
(Rom.  I.  17)  that  God's  righteousness  is 
revealed  in  the  gospel  according  to  his  own 
words,  it  is  the  argument  of  the  statement 
that  the  gospel  is  the  power  of  God;  but 
this  is  something  active  which  replenishes 
man.  If  Christ  is  called  (i  Cor.  i.  30)  "our 
righteousness,"  a  limitation  to  imputed  right- 
eousness is  inadmissible.  Even  in  Rom.  5.12 
sqq.  the  contrast  of  the  righteousness  of 
the  second  Adam  and  the  sin  of  the  first 
Adam  is  suitable  only  when  the  righteous- 
ness of  Christ  transferred  to  us  is  also  con- 
ceived of  as  active. 

But  this  consideration  finds  also  its  con- 
firmation from  the  idea  of  the  Pauline  be- 
lief. For  the  pithy  words  of  the  Pauline 
faith  is  this  that  in  life  communion  with 
Christ  Jesus,  neither  circumcision  availeth 
anything,  nor  uncircumcision ;  but  faith 
which  worketh  by  love  (Gal.  5.  6).  Here 
the  Catholics,  in  order  tO'  maintain  their 
doctrine  of  justification,  must  translate  the 
Greek  verb  passively:  "the  faith,  which  by 
love  became  efficient,"  whereas  the  respective 


74        St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

verb  is  never  used  passively  in  the  New  Tes- 
tament. Paul  acknowledges  here  as  the  true 
inner  disposition  of  the  Christian  a  faith 
which  shows  his  life's  strength  in  works  of 
love.  This  faith,  because  it  brings  Christ 
into  our  hearts,  "kills  the  old  Adam,  makes 
entirely  new  men  and  brings  the  Holy  Spirit. 
Faith  is  a  living,  active,  busy,  mighty  thing, 
that  it  is  impossible  not  to  do  good  without 
ceasing"  (Luther,  in  his  Preface  to  the  Epis- 
tle to  the  Romans). 

The  idea  of  justification  appears  much 
contrasted  in  the  ancient  church  where  re- 
ception into  the  church  was  taken  as  a  justi- 
fication-act. True,  it  is  Pauline  to  closely 
connect  baptism  and  justification,  as  well  as 
faith  and  baptism ;  but  the  Pauline  collective 
view  of  justification  is,  as  we  have  seen, 
much  richer. 

On  the  other  hand,  Luther  enlarged  the 
doctrine  of  justification  in  so  far  as  he  in- 
cluded in  it  the  daily  forgiveness  of  sins. 
Herein  lies  the  correct  thought  that  God's 
declaration  of  justification  is  unchangeable 
and  is  not  confused  by  the  daily  sin  of  the 
Christian ;  but  Paul  himself  has  not  drawn 
this  conclusion.    True,  he  proves  in  the  Epis- 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  75 

tie  to  the  Galatians  that  with  justification  all 
blessing  is  given  (chapter  3.  8  sqq.),  and 
that  aspiration  after  justification  by  the  law 
separates  Christians  from  Christ  (chapter  5. 
4  sqq. ) .  He  therefore  considers  justification 
as  effectual  for  the  whole  life  of  the  Chris- 
tian; but  he  stated  this  not  directly  and 
still  less  did  he  put  forward  daily  forgiveness 
of  sins  as  given  in  justification.  Where  he 
saw  sin  in  the  church  he  referred  to  God's 
faithfulness,  who  will  perform  the  work 
which  he  hath  once  begun,  and  will  also 
strengthen  the  moral  power  (i  Cor.  i.  8,  9; 
2  Thess.  3.  3-5 ;  Phil.  i.  6-1 1 ).  Justification 
is  a  declaration  passed  by  God  on  man  under 
the  view-point  of  eternity  without  regard  to 
the  fluctuations  of  the  Christian  life. 

Our  present  dogmatical  science  searches 
into  the  psychological  conditions  under 
which  faith  originates  and  grows.  To  the 
problems  which  belong  to  it,  belong  also 
how  faith  and  justification  are  related  to  one 
another.  Every  progress  in  the  knowledge 
of  the  psychological  events  of  the  religious 
life  IS  certainly  to  be  welcomed  thankfully. 
Such  researches  are  necessary ;  but  we  must 
not  forget  the  difference  between  our  present 


76         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

reflection,  our  present  dogmatical  ideas,  and 
those  teachings  of  the  New  Testament.  One 
should  be  careful  not  to  torment  the  apostle 
Paul  with  psychological  queries  for  the  solu- 
tion of  these  problems.  The  question.  When 
and  how,  for  what  presuppositions  and  per- 
sonal attitude  does  God's  justification  set  in 
over  the  individual  ?  Paul  did  not  ask  him- 
self at  all.  The  present  justification  of  man 
can  be  defined  as  the  awakening  of  the  belief 
in  acquittal  at  the  final  judgment.  One  may 
say,  that  the  fact  of  faith  is  somewhere  in- 
cluded in  the  justifying  act  of  God,  but  in 
this,  modern  dogmatical  definitions  rather 
than  the  thoughts  of  Paul  are  given.  The 
apostle  was  no  psychologist  in  the  modern 
sense.  His  interest  was  toward  God  and 
objective  salvation  historically  directed  to 
acts  in  which  God  clearly  and  perceptibly 
speaks  to  humanity.  Man  is  in  the  hand  of 
God  like  the  clay  in  the  hands  of  the  potter. 
Man  has  importance  only  in  so  far  as  he  sub- 
mits to  the  act  of  God  and  freely  accepts 
what  will  lead  him  to  communion  with  God ; 
but  for  this  very  reason  we  owe  to  the  apostle 
the  masterly  descriptions  of  the  unredeemed 
and  redeemed  man  (Rom.  7.  and  8.;  Gal. 


Elements  of  Pauline  Christology  "jj 

5.  16  sqq. ;  Phil.  3.  4  sqq.)-  What  was  in 
him  as  a  Christian  and  how  this  inner  pos- 
session reformed  him  and  worked  in  him,  he 
represented  in  a  manner  overhelming  to 
the  modern  man. 


78         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

III 

Jesus  and  Paul 

I.  Paul  himself  is  the  most  public  witness 
for  the  fact  that  he  stands  not  in  a  relation 
of  coordination  but,  at  a  far  distance,  in  the 
most  absolute  dependence  on  Jesus.  Jesus 
the  Lord,  Paul  the  servant.  Jesus  laid  claim 
to  be  the  revelation  of  God  to  humanity,  to 
embody  the  will  of  God  in  humanity.  The 
prophets,  as  servants  and  instruments  of 
God,  executed  God's  commands,  but  beyond 
this,  according  to  their  inner  quality,  they 
did  not  surpass  mankind.  Jesus,  however, 
according  to  his  person  and  his  nature,  was 
of  a  different  kind  than  we  sinful  men.  His 
life  and  work  can  only  be  understood  as  a 
phenomenon  of  divine  life  and  of  divine 
essence.  This  the  apostle  learned  in  the 
decisive  hour  in  that  crisis  in  his  life  before 
Damascus.  Ever  after  one  object  inspired 
him :  the  reception  of  the  life  of  Christ  into 
his  own  life;  to  be  pervaded  and  tried  by 
the  power  of  Christ  till  he  himself  became 
nothing  else  than  "Christ." 


Jesus  and  Paul  79 

2.  Hence  Paul  apprehends  the  demand  of 
Jesus,  the  Christian  Hfe-ideal  in  full  purity. 
Yea,  it  may  be  said,  that  in  the  history  of 
the  Christian  Church  there  is  none  other  who 
so  deeply  and  purely  experienced  the  renew- 
ing life-and-love  power  of  Jesus  as  the  apos- 
tle Paul.  Paul  learned  of  Jesus  that  not  the 
assertion  of  one's  ego,  not  one's  righteous- 
ness, not  any  other  earthly  good  is  the  object 
of  the  God-intended  human  effort,  but  min- 
istering love,  humility,  unselfishness,  obedi- 
ence, receptivity  to  God's  gifts — these  are 
the  loftiest  desires.  "And  now  abideth  faith, 
hope,  charity,  these  three;  but  the  greatest 
of  these  is  charity."  "The  fruit  of  the  Spirit 
is  love,  joy,  peace,  longsuffering,  gentleness, 
goodness,  meekness,  temperance."  He  who 
coined  these  words  and  endeavored  to  realize 
them  in  his  life  has  rightly  understood  Jesus. 

3.  Jesus  brought  his  message  from  God, 
his  heavenly  Father,  concerning  the  king- 
dom of  God  in  which  God's  will  of  love  and 
omnipotence  should  be  perfected,  concerning 
the  call  of  man  to  moral  perfection  in  God, 
concerning  his  task  as  the  Son  of  man  and 
the  Son  of  God,  to  remove  the  obstacles  op- 
posing the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  God, 


8o         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

that  he  may  become  Head  and  King  in  this 
kingdom.  He  did  not  do  this  in  the  form  of 
theological  statements,  but  from  the  depth 
of  his  united  consciousness  with  God,  almost 
as  from  immediate  view,  unreflected,  guided 
by  continuous  divine  revelation  in  his  own 
official  work.  True,  he  gathered  disciples 
around  himself  and  tried  to  educate  them  for 
the  understanding  of  the  revelation  of  the 
divine  will  manifested  in  him ;  but  he  organ- 
ized them  not  as  a  congregation  or  church, 
but  left  the  seed  to  develop  and  form  a  body. 
When  after  his  death  the  apostles  felt  them- 
selves commissioned  to  come  forth  with  the 
Christian  preaching,  that  which  was  personal 
life  and  immediate  view  in  Jesus  had  to  be 
cast  into  the  form  of  theological  ideas  and 
statements ;  a  congregation  had  to  be  organ- 
ized. In  this  work  Paul  had  a  considerable 
share,  since  he  was  the  greatest  theologian 
as  well  as  the  greatest  organizer  of  the  primi- 
tive Christian  Church.  But  it  cannot  fail 
that,  in  such  a  coining  of  Christian  doctrine 
as  well  as  of  ecclesiastical  order,  much  was 
adopted  which  was  individual  and  contem- 
poraneous. 

4.  Jesus  lived  as  the  true  son  of  his  peo- 


Jesus  and  Paul  8i 

pie.  He  kept  the  law  of  his  fathers  and  ad- 
vised those  whom  he  healed  to  fulfill  the  stat- 
utes of  this  law.  He  selected  twelve  disci- 
ples, to  whom  he  promised  that  they  should 
sit  upon  twelve  thrones  judging  the  twelve 
tribes  of  Israel.  He  will  fulfill  the  hope  of 
Israel  and  bring  about  the  completion  of  the 
Old  Testament  revelation  of  God  and  clothe 
his  historical  mission  in  the  idea  of  Jewish 
Messianism.  And  yet,  this  Jewish  cover 
falls  from  him  or  becomes  an  illumined  veil 
as  soon  as  we  come  in  contact  with  him.  He 
had  nothing  at  all  in  his  nature  of  the  tradi- 
tional narrowness  of  Judaism  as  it  so  often 
expressed  itself  in  this  people  in  passionate 
violence,  in  narrow-mindedness,  in  love,  in 
hatred,  in  a  certain  conception  of  the  world 
and  history.  His  demand  concerns  not  only 
the  Jew,  nor  a  certain  time,  it  concerns  man 
in  general.  In  the  Jew  who  is  addressed 
man  is  intended.  In  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  Jesus  recognizes  Jewish  scribism  and 
the  Pharisaic  perversion  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment commandments,  and  yet  almost  every 
word  IS  so  that  He  could  speak  it  to  us  today. 
In  reading  the  Beatitudes,  the  conditions  for 
entering  into  the  kingdom  of  God,  or  the 


82         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

parables  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  it  seems 
to  us  as  if  he  described  our  own  wants  and 
needs,  the  object  of  our  hope,  and  everlasting 
laws  of  our  genesis  and  growth. 

None  of  the  apostles  perceived  so  clearly 
and  keenly  as  Paul  did  that  Jesus  overcame 
Judaism  and  brought  in  a  new  religion  of 
humanity.  It  was  he  who,  in  victorious 
struggle  as  a  true  follower  of  the  Lord,  com- 
pelled recognition  of  the  universal  character 
of  Christianity  and  banished  Jewish  cere- 
monies from  Christianity.  He  brought  the 
religion  of  Jesus  to  the  Greeks  and  Romans. 
His  Jesus  Christ,  who  addressed  all  men, 
who  wished  to  make  all  children  of  God,  who 
is  rich  unto  all  in  heavenly  goods  and  gifts, 
was  not  a  self-made  Christ  but  the  historical 
Christ. 

In  the  preaching  of  Paul  he  embraced  the 
ancient  world  and  apprehended  us  of  today 
also  with  such  overwhelming  power  that  we 
can  never  permit  the  elimination  of  the  Epis- 
tles of  the  apostle  Paul  from  our  Bible.  And 
yet  Paul  was  never  wholly  able  to  throw  off 
Jewish  limitations.  As  apostle  he  remained 
a  Jew.  In  him  there  was  nothing  Hellenic. 
Greek  wisdom  and  Greek  culture,  though  hot 


Jesus  and  Paul  83 

uninfluenced  by  it,  seemed  to  him  foolishness 
beside  the  gospel.  He  did  not  foster  it.  He 
held  to  the  Jewish  view  of  the  world,  of  his- 
tory, of  man.  To  him  the  history  of  humani- 
ty is  the  history  of  the  Jewish  people  with  the 
principal  types,  Adam,  Abraham,  Moses  and 
Christ.  The  Jewish  law  was  on  the  whole 
and  from  principle  also  binding  for  the 
heathen  world.  The  ideas  which  wxre  ex- 
pressed in  the  preaching  of  Paul  belonged 
to  Old  Testament  and  Jewish  theology,  and 
were  therefore  partly  unintelligible  to  Greeks. 
Such,  for  example,  as  Christ,  gospel.  Spirit 
and  flesh,  sin  and  grace,  law,  righteousness 
of  God,  faith  in  the  Pauline  sense.  The 
forms  in  which  Paul  expected  the  coming 
down  of  the  kingdom  of  God  from  heaven 
upon  earth  and  the  coming  of  the  Messiah, 
belong  also  to  Jewish  theology.  Paul's  doc- 
trine of  righteousness  cannot  deny  its  Jewish 
origin.  The  Christian  idea  of  salvation  in 
it  is  directly  embraced  in  a  Jewish  scheme. 
True,  he  breaks  this  scheme  and  states  the 
opposite  of  that,  just  what  righteousness 
really  means.  The  doctrine  of  God  (Rom. 
9-1 1 )  contains  elements  which  conflicted 
with  the  philosophical  thinking  of  an  edu- 


84         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

cated  Greek  and  could  only  be  explained 
from  a  residue  of  Jewish  thinking.  Paul 
could  never  wholly  overcome  his  strong  tem- 
perament which  adhered  to  him  as  an  in- 
heritance of  his  people;  indeed,  it  was  a 
most  wonderful  fact  that  God  chose  a  former 
Pharisee  as  his  instrument  to  preach  to  the 
heathen;  wonderful  that  such  a  world-his- 
torical success  was  assigned  to  this  very 
Jew. 

5.  The  life  of  Jesus  stands  before  us  in 
unity  and  closeness.  It  shows  no  rents, 
no  cracks  or  breaks,  no  other  course  at  differ- 
ent times.  Jesus  lived  his  life  in  continual, 
undisturbed  communion  with  God.  Paul, 
however,  experienced  in  his  life  a  deep 
change  which  affected  the  innermost  part  of 
his  being.  His  theology  is  that  of  one  who 
is  broken.  From  his  undisturbed  commun- 
ion with  God  Jesus  perceived  as  none  other 
did  the  weakness  of  human  nature.  Already 
at  his  baptism,  in  the  beginning  of  his  Mes- 
sianic ministry,  he  entered  into  the  sin  of  the 
people  and  by  his  baptism  manifested  that 
he  considered  the  object  of  his  calling  to  be 
the  deliverance  of  the  people  from  sin  and 
guilt.     He  saw  the  hidden  connection  be- 


Jesus  and  Paul  85 

tween  sin  and  disease.  He  knew  that  the 
human  race  is  evil;  he  taught  his  disciples 
to  pray  daily  for  the  forgiveness  of  their 
guilt;  he  established  in  the  Lord's  Supper 
a  continual  memorial  of  the  forgiveness  of 
sins;  took  upon  himself  a  cruel  death  to 
atone  for  his  people,  and  yet  he  sketched  no 
dark  picture  of  the  world.  As  in  the  Old 
Testament  he  finds  God's  will  expressed  in 
like  perfection  to  that  which  he  has  in  his 
heart,  he  regarded  the  world  as  God's  crea- 
tion in  the  light  of  perfection,  which  would 
be  realized  in  it  by  the  power  that  was  in 
himself.  He  knew  himself  called  to  make 
the  world  anew,  to  make  it  what  it  was  orig- 
inally destined  by  God  to  be.  He  knew  with 
absolute  certainty  that  God's  will  intended 
this,  and  now  already  he  saw  the  image  of 
God  shine  forth  even  where  present  condi- 
tions suggested  failure.  Quietly  and  safely 
he  described  the  ideal,  unconcerned  whether 
the  distance  from  it  were  ever  so  great  in 
the  present  reality. 

Paul  always  bore  in  his  body  the  marks  of 
the  struggle  he  passed  through  in  his  experi- 
ence of  Christ.  In  his  conception  and  for- 
mulating of  Christian  salvation,  we  see  clear- 


86         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

ly  in  the  apostle  traces  of  the  conversion  of 
the  Jew  to  Christianity.  Jesus  had  no  con- 
sciousness of  difference  in  his  attitude 
toward  the  Old  Testament  as  God's  revela- 
tion and  the  Old  Testament  law  as  the  dis- 
position of  God's  will,  because  everywhere 
in  the  Old  Testament  he  found  himself  and 
his  task  pointed  out  and  found  the  Word  of 
God  and  the  Will  of  God  with  his  own 
communion  with  God,  suitably  also  ex- 
pressed in  the  Old  Testament,  even  when 
he  depreciated  some  Old  Testament  enact- 
ments. For  Paul,  even  as  a  Christian,  that 
also  seems  true.  The  Old  Testament  reli- 
gion which  met  him  as  such  in  Pharisaism 
was  abolished  and  laid  aside  for  him  through 
Christ ;  the  Old  Testament  appeared  to  him 
as  the  ministration  of  death  and  condemna- 
tion; nevertheless,  the  Scripture  stands  for 
him  immovable  as  the  highest  authority.  A 
more  certain  proof  than  all  arguments  and 
loyal  considerations  is,  for  him,  "It  is  writ- 
ten." With  Scripture-proof  every  question 
is  settled.  In  like  manner  the  law  is  abol- 
ished for  him  through  Christ — Christ  is  the 
end  of  the  law  as  he  is  also  the  expression  of 
the  eternal,  unchangeable  will  of  God.  From 


Jesus  and  Paul  87 

this  seeming  contradictory  position  he  did 
not  swerve.  Moreover,  in  consequence  of 
the  break  experienced  in  his  conversion,  the 
apostle's  conception  of  the  world  is  thor- 
oughly pessimistic.  He  sees  the  great  dis- 
tance from  the  goal  before  his  eyes  the  world 
lies  in  a  state  of  deepest  sin  and  corruption. 
Not  only  heathenism  but  Judaism  also,  be- 
cause of  its  wickedness,  is  under  the  wrath 
of  God.  Since  Adam  sin  has  had  its  sway 
in  humanity;  the  law  enhanced  sin,  yea,  it 
was  given  that  transgression  might  abound. 
Before  and  besides  Christ  there  is  no  salva- 
tion. Only  where  Christ  is  operative  with 
his  power  does  he  see  God's  seed  grow  upon 
earth.  The  necessary  outcome  of  this  con- 
ception of  the  world  seemed  to  be  asceticism 
and  dualism;  nevertheless  the  same  liberty 
and  the  same  idealism  got  also  the  upper 
hand  in  him  which  were  in  the  character  of 
Christ.  It  is  Paul's  conviction  of  faith  also, 
that  the  world  and  all  that  is  therein,  is  of 
God;  that  man  can  use  everything  which 
it  offers  with  thanksgiving  to  God;  that 
dietary  laws  and  outward  limitations,  as 
Judaism  established  and  which  Jesus  himself 
had  not  yet  annulled,  are  opposed  to  the 


88        St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

creative  will  of  God.  What  inner  liberty 
is  expressed  in  words  like  these:  "Whether 
therefore  ye  eat,  or  drink,  or  whatsoever  ye 
do,  do  all  to  the  glory  of  God"  (i  Cor.  lo. 
31).  "For  all  things  are  yours;  whether 
Paul,  or  Apollos,  or  Cephas,  or  the  world, 
or  life,  or  death,  or  things  present,  or  things 
to  come;  all  are  yours"  (i  Cor.  3.  21,  22). 
And  this  liberty  Christ  gave  to  him. 

6.  The  preaching  of  the  earthly  Jesus  was 
essentially  the  preaching  of  the  kingdom  of 
God;  but  in  the  apostle's  preaching,  this 
idea  plays  no  considerable  part.  The  con- 
tents of  his  gospel  is  Christ.  At  the  first 
glance  this  seems  to  be  a  contraction,  but 
in  reality  it  is  only  a  concentration.  Paul 
stated  himself  in  2  Cor.  i.  20  why  he 
made  Christ  the  center :  "For  all  the  prom- 
ises of  God  in  him  are  yea."  Jesus  himself 
also  saw  the  realization  of  the  kingdom  of 
God  united  with  his  person.  Where  he  was, 
there  was  the  kingdom ;  for  he  had  ip  him- 
self the  energies  of  the  kingdom  and  planted 
them  in  humanity.  His  earthly  teaching 
and  educational  activity  had  for  its  task  the 
education  of  his  disciples  as  instruments  and 
coworkers  of  the  kingdom.     His  ministry 


Jesus  and  Paul  89 

of  teaching  revealed  in  him  the  divine  pow- 
ers of  a  Redeemer.  It  was  only  after  the 
complete  fulfillment  of  his  Messianic  work 
upon  earth — which  means,  in  the  sense  of 
Paul,  only  after  his  death  on  the  cross  and 
his  resurrection — after  Jesus  had  been  ex- 
alted by  God  to  heavenly  power  and  glory, 
that  he  could  manifest  his  Messianic  power 
in  its  fullness.  Thus  the  preaching  of  the 
kingdom  is  the  veiling  of  the  personal  task 
of  the  work  of  Jesus ;  the  preaching  of  the 
exalted  Christ  is  the  necessary  unveiling  of 
his  central  significance  following  the  comple- 
tion of  his  work.  Hence  in  the  putting  aside 
of  the  original  idea  of  the  kingdom  of  God 
we  have  not  a  breaking  away  from  the  gos- 
pel but  the  certain  knowledge  that  since  the 
exaltation  of  Christ  as  Lord  the  kingdom 
of  God  is  equivalent  to  service  for  Christ 
(Rom.  14.  17,  18).  Christians  know  them- 
selves translated  by  God  into  the  kingdom 
of  his  dear  Son  (Col.  i.  13). 

7.  Paul's  theology  is  redemption  theology. 
In  the  center  of  his  theological  thought 
stands  the  cross  of  Christ.  In  his  congre- 
gations he  knew  nothing  except  Jesus  Christ 
the  crucified.    Here  is  the  point  where  the 


90         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

perfection  and  the  supposed  imperfection  of 
the  PauHne  Christ-beHef  becomes  most  obvi- 
ous. The  PauHne  Christ,  in  order  to  become 
a  historical  phenomenon,  full  of  vigor,  must 
be  supplemented  by  the  synoptic  Son  of  man 
and  the  Johannean  Son  of  God;  for  the 
object  of  our  faith  can  be  no  less  and  no 
more  than  the  whole  Christ.  We  could  not 
understand  Christ,  not  subordinate  to  him 
as  our  Saviour  and  allow  him  to  show  us 
the  way  to  our  heavenly  Father,  unless  in  his 
preaching*  and  in  his  work  he  won  our  hearts, 
and  unless  we  heard  God  himself  speaking 
to  us  in  him.  The  one  deed,  his  expiatory 
sacrifice  on  the  cross,  were  too  little.  Now 
Paul  himself,  as  we  have  shown,  had  the 
strongest  impression  of  the  personality  and 
the  divine  conversation  of  Jesus,  but  in 
his  preaching  the  life-picture  of  Jesus  has 
not  been  brought  out  in  such  a  way  as 
our  religious  feeling  demanded.  In  order 
to  establish  his  gospel,  Paul  goes  back  to 
his  own  apostolic  judgment  or  to  the 
Old  Testament  even,  where  it  was  easier  to 
refer  to  the  historical  work  of  Jesus.  No- 
where in  his  Epistles  did  he  sketch  a  por- 
trait of  Jesus  or  describe  his  lovely  and 


Jesus  and  Paul  91 

gracious  manner,  his  grandeur  and  purity, 
the  divine  authorization  of  his  doing,  in 
concrete,  historical  events  of  his  life.  The 
description  of  the  humble  and  obedient  con- 
duct of  Jesus  (Phil.  2.  7  sq.)  would  cer- 
tainly read  otherwise  had  it  been  given  by 
one  of  his  disciples  who  stood  in  earthly 
life-communion  with  Jesus.  We  would  then, 
no  doubt,  read  not  only  of  his  earthly  ap- 
pearance, "that  he  was  obedient  untO'  death, 
even  the  death  of  the  cross."  Paul  also 
nowhere  indicates  that  Jesus  himself  had 
first  to  learn  what  God  had  willed  to  break 
the  impenitent  mind  of  the  people  and  to 
purge  humanity ;  that  only  by  looking  back 
Jesus  perceived  which  way  to  go  was  the 
decree  of  God. 

The  apostle  puts  the  death  of  Jesus  under 
different  points  of  view ;  thus  under  that  of 
the  act  of  love  for  his  own,  of  the  obedience 
of  calling  of  the  covenant,  but  in  the  center 
of  his  contemplation  of  Jesus  Christ  the  death 
stands  as  the  atonement  for  humanity.  It 
is  indeed  incorrect  to  state  that  he  was  the 
first  to  conceive  the  death  of  Jesus  as  an 
atonement.  In  pre-Pauline  Christendom  this 
understanding  was  already  alive;   for  Paul 


92        St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

writes  to  the  Corinthians  (i  Cor.  15.  3): 
"For  I  dehvered  unto  you  first  of  all  that 
which  I  also  received ;  how  that  Christ  died 
for  our  sins  according  to  the  Scriptures," 
and  before  Peter,  according  to  Gal.  2.  16, 
he  asserted  at  Antioch  the  theological  state- 
ment which  Peter  also  recognized  as  correct : 
"we  are  justified  by  the  faith  of  Christ,  and 
not  by  the  works  of  the  law."  This  faith, 
however,  also  in  the  sense  of  Peter,  has  its 
foundation  in  nothing  else  than  in  the  expi- 
atory death  of  Christ.  But  in  two  words 
even  of  the  synoptic  tradition,  Jesus  himself, 
both  times  in  allusion  to  the  suffering  serv- 
ant of  God  (Isa.  53),  represented  his  death 
and  suffering  as  an  atonement.  "The  Son  of 
man  came  to  minister,  and  to  give  up  his  life 
a  ransom  for  many"  (Matt.  20.  28)  ;  and  in 
the  words  of  the  invitation  of  the  Lord's 
Supper.  But  one  cannot  say  that  this  under- 
standing of  the  death  of  Jesus  by  the  Synop- 
tists  surpassed  the  other  interpretations. 
Jesus  most  frequently  mentions  his  death  as 
that  of  Son  of  man.  In  the  quite  pre- 
dominant emphasis  of  the  idea  of  atonement 
by  Paul,  there  is  no  doubt  a  contraction. 
When  a  Pharisee,  Paul  took  decisive  offence 


Jesus  and  Paul  93 

in  the  death  of  the  Messiah  on  the  cross, 
but  this  death  afterward  became  the  firm 
foundation  of  his  doctrine  of  redemption 
and  reconciHation. 

And  yet,  the  merit  of  Paul  cannot  be 
regarded  too  highly  in  that  he  distinctly 
regarded  the  death  of  Jesus  as  an  atone- 
ment, for  only  thus  is  the  character  of  Chris- 
tianity securely  established  as  the  religion 
of  redemption  in  the  full  sense.  To  be  sure, 
Jesus  is  not  only  the  Redeemer  in  his  death, 
but  also  in  his  earthly  work.  But  Jesus's 
death  on  the  cross  Is  and  will  remain  the 
decisive  judgment  of  God  upon  the  sin  of 
the  world ;  and  the  crucified  and  risen  Christ 
is  the  only  and  full  assurance  that  we  have 
a  gracious  God.  Here  the  reasoning  of  Paul  is 
one  joined  together  in  itself  and  is  irrefuta- 
ble from  the  standpoint  of  theism.  If  Christ 
died,  he  died  according  to  the  will  of  God. 
His  death  is  therefore  necessary  for  our 
salvation.  If  Christ  died,  he  died  not  for 
his  own  sake,  but  for  our  sakes.  Did  Christ, 
the  sinless  Son  of  God,  suffer  death  ?  Then 
this  death  is  a  divine  judgment  upon  hu- 
manity. There  is  no  salvation  except  in  the 
appropriation  of  the  saving  power  of  this 


94        St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

death.  If  Christ,  who  died  and  rose  again, 
made  his  divine  power  operative  in  his  peo- 
ple, if  he  gave  them  of  his  Spirit,  if  he 
drew  them  into  his  Hfe-communion,  and 
makes  us  children  of  God  who  call  "Abba, 
Father,"  then  man  cannot  otherwise  come 
to  God  than  by  leaving  himself  out  of  the 
question  and  taking  everything  from  Christ's 
grace.  Before  God  we  stand  as  sinners,  but 
he  pardons  us  for  Christ's  sake,  and  by  that 
which  Christ  gives  us,  we  become  accepta- 
ble in  his  eyes.  Hence  the  Christian  feels 
himself  as  a  miracle  of  divine  grace;  all 
that  he  is,  he  is  from  God,  through  Christ 
his  redeemer  and  friend. 

This  is  also  the  powerful  religious  cer- 
tainty which  through  the  instrumentality  of 
Paul  has  ever  and  ever  beamed  in  the  great 
men  of  the  history  of  the  Church.  This  is 
the  Christian  faith  which  Luther  restored  to 
us.  It  is  a  vain  endeavor  to  represent  Paul 
as  the  second  founder  of  Christianity.  Paul 
will  remain  what  he  was  ordained  to  be, 
the  apostle  and  servant  of  Christ.  The  con- 
tents of  his  preaching  is  the  life-power  and 
the  power  of  redemption  of  the  historical 
Christ. 


Jesus  and  Paul  95 

conclusion 

The  importance  of  Paul  is,  however,  not 
exhausted  in  what  he,  as  a  disciple  of  Jesus 
who  understood  his  Master,  has  been  and 
still  is  within  the  history  of  the  Christian 
religion;  to  him  belongs  also  a  place  in  the 
intellectual  history  of  humanity. 

The  Greek  world  sought  a  knowledge  of 
the  cosmos.  The  world  and  its  laws,  its  nat- 
ural uniform  causes,  were  the  problems 
which  it  followed.  Its  ideal  of  life  was  an 
artificial  additional  building  of  the  beauty 
and  harmony  of  the  universe  in  the  ethico- 
historical  world.  According  to  Plato,  the 
reason  of  man  is  conscious  of  its  homogene- 
ousness  with  the  divine  by  plunging  into  this 
harmony  of  the  cosmos  and  the  pleasurable 
contemplation  of  its  beauty.  In  such  en- 
deavor Greek  philosophy,  however,  after  a 
development  of  serious  inquiry  comprising 
some  centuries,  ended  in  skepticism,  in  the 
conclusion  that  proof  of  the  reality  of  phe- 
nomena is  impossible ;  that  the  knowledge  of 
the  objective  basis  of  human  knowledge  is 
unattainable.  This  was  a  declaration  of 
the  bankruptcy  of  Greek  philosophy.     The 


96         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

science  of  the  human  mind  having  arrived  at 
this  point,  it  could  only  be  led  along  the  way 
of  a  certain  theory  of  knowledge,  that  is,  if 
one  distinguished  the  world  outside  us  from 
the  reality  given  in  the  inner  life  of  man. 

After  the  decay  of  the  Greek  city-states 
within  which  the  individual  had  found  a 
footing,  practical  results,  respect,  riches,  per- 
sonal satisfaction,  individualism  in  philoso- 
phy had  indeed  come  to  a  certain  recognition 
in  the  Stoic  and  Epicurean  systems ;  but  for 
Greek  science  the  knowledge  remained  hid- 
den that  in  the  self-consciousness  of  man  a 
firm  starting  point  is  given  from  which  man 
can  comprehend  himself  in  the  world  outside 
him.  Socrates  had  already  inquired  into  the 
criterion  of  the  ideas  of  knowledge  and 
moral  consciousness,  but  he  failed  to  dis- 
cover that  a  powerful  reality  is  given  in 
conscious  experience,  the  only  one  of  which 
we  are  certain. 

The  first  in  whom  experience  and  the 
metaphysical  are  met  with  in  Paul.  His  self- 
consciousness  felt  perfectly  sure  of  the  facts 
of  the  inner  religious  life.  In  this  conviction 
of  the  undeniable  reality  of  the  contents  of 
the  personal  experience  and  in  the  geniality 


Jesus  and  Paul  97 

of  his  personal  sense  of  life,  rests  the  sur- 
passing greatness  of  the  apostle  over  his 
time  and  the  mighty  influence  he  exerted, 
though  his  interest  was  confined  to  religion. 
Paul  was  no  philosopher  and  never  intended 
to  be.  He  was  not  concerned  about  a  the- 
oretical definition  of  the  world;  but  in  his 
religious  experience,  and  from  this  point, 
he  transforms  his  views  of  God  and  the 
world.  He  gives  no  statement  of  religious 
experience  proven  in  a  knowably  theoretical 
way,  and  yet  he  has  a  place  in  the  historical 
progress  of  metaphysics  as  to  the  theory  of 
knowledge.  In  him  we  find  the  beginnings 
of  a  psychological  self-reflection  and  analy- 
sis of  the  events  of  the  inner  life  which  are 
the  supposition  for  this,  that  the  contents 
of  the  inner  life  are  expressed  in  ideas. 
Augustine  showed  in  bolder  outlines  all  this 
which  is  met  with  in  Paul  in  its  first  elements 
and  in  an  undeveloped  form,  and  on  this 
account  he  denotes  further  progress  in  the 
knowledge  of  the  meaning  of  reality  given 
in  self-consciousness.  Augustine  did  not 
subject  the  facts  of  consciousness  to  a  co- 
herent construction  of  parts,  and  hence  he 
failed  to  arrive  at  a  contemplation  of  the 


98         St.  Paul  as  a  Theologian 

world  which  surpassed  the  limits  of  ancient 
philosophy.  But  he  perceived  the  importance 
of  Greek  skepticism  in  ancient  science  and 
in  a  settlement  with  it  found  in  Christian 
experience  the  point  from  which  a  new 
arrangement  of  the  elements  of  a  philosophy 
of  the  world  must  take  place.  In  this  man- 
ner he  prepared  the  way  for  modern  critical 
philosophy. 

Finis 


ri'lll  llll  IN  llllri'nl'   S™-ary-Speer   Library 


1    1012  01146  1474 


Date  Due 


